


Desert Spirals

by Seaward



Series: Uncertain Ground [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Circus, Cultural Differences, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 23:13:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 57,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13305369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seaward/pseuds/Seaward
Summary: Mysterious forces are at play when Lily arrives in New Mexico with her family. Power in the land and prejudices at school confound her efforts to fit in, and each new insight leads to questions no one wants to answer. Lily struggles to understand new friends and impossible situations without losing herself or her family to the mysteries of their desert home





	Desert Spirals

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this story in 2008 under the pseudonym Clara Ward. Many people would categorize it as young adult fantasy, but it is meant to offer something to readers of all ages. The teenage characters' reactions are meant to be honest, and not always ideal or PC. although I believe their understandings develop in positive ways. Special thanks to Betsy and Cera for their help with earlier drafts. All remaining mistakes are mine.

 

1

 

A Bridge

The bridge was not so different from a circus rig. Lily studied its profile from where the dirt path joined the old road. Then she walked up to where a handrail met a vertical bar and planted her hands, palms on top, thumbs below cold metal. She stood, tall and still in an instant, as if a spotlight had clicked on. The steel handrail was about as wide around as a static trapeze bar, but rougher, colder in the desert morning. The rail was attached, right at the side edge of the bridge, to tall vertical poles, evenly spaced, with cables in between that formed Vs like pointy teeth. These teeth were her stage, made of harsh wire, not rope, but each was secured, and enough could be done with a handrail and some almost rope.

New Mexico sun fired her back, but the bar wasn't warm in her grip, not yet. She could only guess what it would be like by noon, if she was around to see noon. The air already smelled like baked ceramic. Below the bridge was a creek bed without a creek. Rocks and larger rocks in a gorge. If she fell, it wouldn't be pretty, not that she cared. She tightened her shoulders and rubbed her hands on the bar, knowing without chalk she'd get blisters. She squatted beneath the rail and clamped her callused hands around the metal. Then she tucked up her legs, pulling knees between arms, and put one foot where handrail met vertical bar and one where the cable crossed. Arching her back to make the curve, she pushed out into Birds' Nest, a hanging backbend with her face just inches above the concrete edge. She hadn't stretched, but she let her spine arch farther, conducting the power of gravity, taking the shape of a water drop as it fell to earth.

It wasn't so different from practicing on a real static trapeze, except for the temptation to let go, to tumble down onto the boulders, the lack of a coach or a mat to protect her. She'd been feeling it all morning, that flirt-with-death pull. She felt it whenever her family made a bad move. She'd dressed all in black, jazz pants and a rayon shirt, tight enough to let her hang upside down, stretchy enough to let her do circus. She looked like a Goth, which she wasn't, if they even had Goths in New Mexico. But she didn't have to go Goth to wear black when she was in a mood, and she'd woken up not caring if she or anyone else made it through the day. Now she wasn't sure, as the sun and physical exertion warmed her attitude.

Did people throw themselves off bridges with no water underneath? It was a long way down. She'd certainly break something, but if it wasn't her skull, someone might find her before she bled to death, and then she'd just be the pathetic Goth freak from out of town who couldn't even kill herself properly. No, jumping off a bridge probably wasn't a choice activity for this morning.

She straightened her back, then shifted her legs and kicked one down into Angel. Her top hand held the cable as the other stretched down, which hurt as much as she'd expected. But stretching the lower leg and arm out, using the full length of her lanky, almost fashionably slender body, felt good. Sure, she'd like to have more of a figure, real soon, but part of her knew she looked good doing this. She looked toward her hand (always look so the audience follows your gaze), but that put the sun in her eyes.

Hauling herself to stand on cement again, she repositioned so she could hit Reverse Angel with her lower arm and leg still draping over the side of the bridge and no sun in her face this way. With her eyes just above the cement, she realized how little wear it showed at the edge, though nothing else about the bridge seemed new. It must be the lack of snow, ice, and annual road repair. She looked past the edge, focusing on the ravine below. What happened if you dropped from a bridge doing a trick called Angel? Would that get you into heaven if there was such a place? What if you were doing Reverse Angel?

Lily looked at the increasingly familiar boulders below, one like a cat, one like a camel, and then wrapped both legs around the vertical bar. This was not as good as wrapping them around a trapeze rope or circus silks, but she let herself hang down into Candlestick anyway. Head first over the chasm; sun burning bright from her left, arms crossed on her chest like a bat or a corpse, she'd hang for as long as she could. If she fell at the end, that would prove her family should never have moved to New Mexico.

As she felt the sweat drip up her backbone instead of down, she heard a buzzing sound. How silent it had been before-- how early was it, 8 AM here? She hadn't seen anyone the entire time she'd walked, and she hadn't noticed the silence. Now the buzzing grew until it was definitely an engine, and the sharp sound of a bird kept breaking through. Where a bird would be in this desert, Lily couldn't guess, but the motor noise was getting closer. Could it be on the dirt track leading up to this bridge? There was a better bridge on a fully paved road not half a mile away. She'd crossed it on her way out, and if the creek bed didn't curve, she'd be able to see that bridge from here.

The sound came nearer and nearer. Lily wondered if she really wanted to tempt fate that much. Her legs were already tired, and while this wouldn't be a bad way to go, she wasn't up for a real suicide today. Her back was curving to pull up just as the bridge began to shake. The vibrations traveled through her legs and she knew: this was it. Her legs were slipping, just a bit, with each little shake, her feet losing traction against the bar. She couldn't pull up while shaking like this. She'd lose her hold for sure.

But the concrete met the small of her back and kept the rest of her from shaking too much. It rattled her backbone, but her thigh muscles clung for her life.

Then the engine cut off, and Lily prepared to pull up. In that moment of almost relaxing her hold, she felt something push against her legs. The muscles tensed again in the fear before a fall. She didn't want to die, didn't want to find out if that fall would kill her. Something strong and hot was forcing her legs to unwind, trying to drop her.

She wanted to scream but her tongue seemed to block her throat, and her legs were clamped so tight that she shivered.

Then the push and the warmth were gone, not like a hand letting go, but like the end of a roller coaster ride when you can finally pull forward in your seat again. Like the end of a horror movie, Lily dropped back into the known again. Arms tingly but strong, palms damp, she pulled herself up fast, grabbing onto the handrail in two places, in time to see a figure walking toward her out of the glare.

The faceplate of a black motorcycle helmet angled down at her, and Lily shifted her arms to pull up in one professional motion, then shook back her loose hair. She could have died. She really could have died, and it would have been this person's fault.

The biker wore a black leather jacket, in much better shape than the bike, and tight enough to show that she was female. She wore jeans and leather boots that laced up her calves and showed strain at the eyelets. Her motorcycle had once been red but never very powerful, which might be why it wasn't so loud before reaching the bridge and wasn't so powerful as to shake Lily off before it stopped. The rider wasn't big either, definitely smaller than Lily, who at fourteen was already five foot eight.

The rider's helmet was also shiny black, with a dark visor that completely hid her face. When she reached to take it off, her hands and wrists were tiny and bone white. For a moment Lily expected a hot supernatural wind to rush out when the helmet was removed.

Inside was just a girl, probably no older than Lily, but she looked a lot better in black. Her hair fluffed into short brown ringlets peppered with blond. Black made Lily look washed out, but this girl's pale skin seemed iridescent beside her dark jacket.

She came to stand beside Lily, no more than a handbreadth away, and looked down into the crevasse.

Lily looked down too, not sure what else to do. And so they stood.

Finally, after maybe half a minute, Lily couldn't stand the silence. "Am I in your space?"

"No." The girl answered clearly but didn't look at Lily.

"Do you want me to go?"

"Not especially. I stopped to see what would happen."

"You tried to push me off."

"No." The statement was flat, not horrified or resentful. The biker girl's white, heart-shaped face turned toward Lily for the first time. Lily felt her face being studied the way boys sometimes studied her body. "Were you planning to jump?"

"You wanted to watch?"

"Were you planning to?"

"Not particularly. Are you?"

"No."

There was silence again, and Lily realized the girl might have misunderstood, though she wasn't exactly acting concerned. Which one of them was behaving strangely? Had someone really pushed on her legs? Lily could remember the feeling, but she'd seen this girl walk toward her afterward, and the pushing hadn't really felt like hands, more like a hot-blooded monster or gravity gone wrong. Could it have been psychological? But she didn't really want to fall. It was just that "why'd we ever come here" funk she hit after most moves. Maybe some kind of muscle fatigue?

"I wasn't going to jump off the bridge, and I don't usually dress like this."

The girl looked at Lily then, as if to see what she was wearing that she didn't usually. The appraisal took time, roaming from her sneakers on up and ending at her dark messy hair. Somehow, it didn't make Lily tense the way someone her age checking out her clothing usually did. It wasn't the way a boy would look at her body, just as the study of her face hadn't really been that either, but there was something in the look.

Then the girl slid her hand along Lily's hair, lifting it up and easing it forward as if her fingers were an ornamental comb. Lily shivered. The action seemed too familiar, but the confidence behind it felt professional, a hair stylist trying something without explaining, a hair stylist who was wearing black leather and studying her in the desert sun of her first weekend in New Mexico.

"I'm Lily, by the way. What's your name?"

There was a pause and a slight tightening of lips before the girl said, "Jen."

Then Jen's hand released Lily's hair, and they sat down in silence for at least two minutes. It wasn't so uncomfortable now. A small brown bird flew under the bridge, probably to a nest or a perch, since it didn't come out again. Jen leaned too far forward trying to see, and Lily remembered their earlier comments on jumping off the bridge.

"Jen, do you go to Farmington High?"

"I will."

"Me too. Are you new here?"

"I just moved to Nuevo Nuevo, if that's what you mean."

"Yeah," said Lily, as she noticed the faint tightening of the lips again, and wondered if there was something more she should have asked.

"Want to go for a ride?"

"On your bike?"

Jen nodded.

Lily had never been on a motorcycle and was curious. But there was something strange about the way Jen offered. How old did you have to be to drive a motorcycle in New Mexico? Even if Jen was licensed, Lily's parents would probably disapprove, and they'd definitely think she should have asked them first. The whole thing about not taking rides from strangers might even apply to girls you met on isolated bridges in a new town.

"Where?" Lily asked.

"Just around."

"Do you have a phone?"

"Wouldn't work."

"Do you have a spare helmet?"

"No, but you can wear mine."

As Lily's mind switched to parental lectures about not sharing hats, she knew she'd decided. If Jen was a mass murderer, Lily's subconscious would not be worrying about head lice. And her sister had been complaining about the cell phone reception since they arrived, so that would cover half an excuse.

"Okay."

They got up and walked together to the bike. Jen silently braided Lily's long black hair and tucked the untied end down into her shirt. The familiarity and lack of conversation bugged Lily some, but maybe people in the Southwest just talked less. Jen handed her the black helmet, and Lily put it on. Then Jen straddled the bike, and Lily tried to get on behind her without seeming too awkward. She wasn't sure how to hold on, but when Jen started the motor, blind panic took over. Lily grabbed a fistful of leather jacket in each hand and they jumped forward, spun back across the bridge, and lit out along the dirt road.

 

The desert seemed fiercer in the dust and wind of the motorcycle than it had from Lily's family's air-conditioned Toyota. It started out an emptiness, all dirt and no grass, but as they passed, the space seemed to fill. Even the hard packed earth sported a web of tiny plants. Many seemed dead, a dried out white or tan, but there were stalks sticking up with bundles on the ends that must hold seeds. There were larger plants in dried bone colors, and the way they clung to the dirt, they must be alive. The bike sped past a string of white, feathery bundles and a couple of cacti that looked dead at the bottom or top but green where their spines poked out. Lily saw them as warrior plants, keeping the road in its place.

After about ten minutes, Lily wondered why she'd come. The desert felt too big. Maybe it could inspire an artist, but how long would it take for someone to find a crashed motorcycle? Still, there was no cool, or even moderately acceptable, way to change her mind now. She hung on to Jen and hoped for the best.

Hours seemed to pass before the motorcycle stopped on the flattened top of a hill, in the middle of nowhere, seemingly right below the morning sun. Jen left the bike and walked to the end of the flat space. Lily stood up too, feeling her legs wobble and her stomach flutter. The helmet was suddenly way too hot, and Lily removed it with fingers gone numb from clutching tight without shifting.

After placing the helmet safely on the bike seat, Lily shook out her hair; it was like taking a deep drink of cool water. Her brain vented and the rest of her body relaxed. She walked over to Jen and said, "Nice view. Where are we?"

"Some mesa. I just drive where the spirit takes me."

Lily decided not to ask if they were lost. "Do you have any water?"

Jen shook her head, as if she didn't see why it would matter. Lily took a slow breath, wondering if Jen wasn't quite right in the head. Lily already knew better than to explore the desert without water, though she'd left unprepared today.

"I didn't try to push you, you know?"

Jen met her eyes, and Lily couldn't see her face move at all, not to show emotion or even to squint from the sun. She saw brown and green flecks surrounded by the whites of the eyes and cream skin beyond that. Long lashes a darker brown than her hair, but not black, not all one shade of brown either. Jen barely blinked. She didn't look away, until finally Lily had to. But Lily didn't know what to say about Jen not pushing her from the bridge. Logically, Jen couldn't have done it, but Lily knew there was some other question she should ask, something about terror and heat. Forcing Jen to speak couldn't make the force on the bridge less real, just make the memory into something different.

"Okay. I have to get home soon anyway or else someone might worry."

"Why?" Jen asked, still staring someplace distant.

"You know, parents."

Jen shook her head, and rather than feeling put down as childish, Lily felt sorry for her. But that was silly; her dad's work with foster kids must be getting to her.

Jen walked to the other side of the mesa, and Lily followed eagerly. No way to know if it was a mile or ten or more, but Lily could tell they were seeing a really long ways. There were even some houses visible in the distance, a little cluster of one stories built in three lines, nothing like Nuevo Nuevo. Lily worked her way around the mesa. The view entranced Lily, even if Jen might be a person of questionable or intermittent sanity.

A flat, horizontal space a few feet down caught Lily's gaze, with another just below. Her eyes traced forward and found another, and a ways below that, one more. Each flat section looked like part of the rock, a chance shelf where stone had cracked and fallen. But the way they lined up, the way they could have been part of something larger made her look.

She jumped when Jen spoke behind her, "What do you see?"

"I was looking for Nuevo Nuevo." How far had they come?

"But what do you see?"

Lily wanted to turn away but looked instead. A heat haze distorted the ground. Two farther mesas formed a bent line. She spotted trails of dirt and rock below her, and her eyes searched the nearest flat places. The heat haze pulled together, forming figures that climbed the steps, but not figures she could distinguish, not until they disappeared. The heat from the vision drew her toward the edge, resurrecting Lily's moment of terror from the bridge where she'd first met Jen.

Lily pulled back.

Was there something strange about the temperature here, or could this illusion and the bridge be explained by lack of water and shade?

Jen followed where Lily had been looking. She gazed at the steps and then at Lily in her cool, assessing way and asked, "You think they might have been steps? A trail down from the mesa?"

"I have no idea. My dad says, 'Look where your eyes find.'" But Lily looked away, wrapping her arms around herself, even as she said it.

"Your dad says that?"

Lily nodded, and faced Jen, trying to see why she cared. What was going on here?

"Does he say anything else?"

"'Close enough for government work.' 'You gotta grow where you're planted.' He says lots of things, picks them up like souvenirs everywhere we go."

"You wouldn't know where he heard that first one?"

Lily shook her head, and they both stood silent, looking down. Lily could still picture where a trail would have run, connecting the series of flat shelves below her. She imagined extra steps carved into the mesa and how people might have walked in a line, cautiously trudging up to check the view or for some religious ritual, but the strange feeling was gone.

Jen started to walk away, and Lily followed eagerly, "Do you know the way back?"

Could a flash of sorrow cross someone's face so fast you couldn't know you saw it? Lily would have sworn it did, but she couldn't remember what it looked like. Now there was just the tightening of the lips, the little pause. "I can take you back to town."

Jen seemed to grow as she returned to her bike, and Lily felt more than a bit childish, like she was giving up on a cool discovery because she was chicken. Still, they really should have brought some water, at least.

She picked up the helmet and strapped it on as Jen boarded the bike. Then she clambered on behind. This time she let herself hold on to Jen's waist rather than just scrunching up her jacket.

As they wound down from the mesa, Lily felt more comfortable on the bike, more like she was a part of it. The breeze of their movement lifted her untucked hair, carried the scents of barely green plants into her nose, and Lily decided the desert was better this way than from a car.

At some point Jen steered onto a paved road and minutes later they cut briefly back to dirt track and stopped at the bridge where they'd met. "Where would you like me to take you?"

Lily drew a blank at first, then slid off the bike. "This is fine. Thanks for the ride."

"Don't thank me. It was interesting."

Lily pulled off the helmet saying, "Guess I'll see you at school Monday."

"Probably."

With that, Jen disappeared into the black helmet, and Lily realized her parents wouldn't have recognized her even if they'd seen her with Jen. Still, it felt better to make her own way home. As the bike pulled away, Lily started walking, feeling energetic, despite her sticky clothing and the garish light around her. Jen seemed okay, not overly social, but at least she'd know someone at school.

Her house was across the newer bridge and down a crazy spiral street. As she turned onto her block, and headed past other new homes. The start of high school finally seemed real. Lily needed to get her boxes unpacked and sort out clothes for the first few days. Was there someplace to shop for school supplies, or should she unload last year's binder? Would she have a chance to check where her classes were, or could she make do with the school map and the schedule she'd been sent?

Lily was jarred back to the present by a moment of dread. Could she have walked right past her new house? She hadn't been watching too carefully, and the house she was approaching, the one she'd thought was hers, didn't seem quite right.

The walls were a sand tone, like so many others. To the left was the garage with a peaked covering over the porch to the right. The walk and single step felt new, smooth, and solid, just as they had when she left.

She crept toward what she hoped was her own front door, but did it have a window before? Lily inspected the diamond-shaped glass, no bigger top to bottom than her hand, no wider side to side than her middle finger, and she felt a faint echo of the warm pull that had frightened her twice already. This time the feeling wasn't so hot or scary, maybe she just imagined the connection to cover her embarrassing inability to find her way home.

The edges of the small diamond window seemed to be pre-molded plastic, or was it called vinyl? It looked like the vinyl had been attached to the glass in some factory and then the little window had been added here and sealed with white goo, like the stuff around the edges of a bathtub. The white goo looked shiny and sort of wet in the sunlight and Lily reached out a finger to check. It wasn't sticky-wet like she'd half thought, but her finger left a slight impression, like the surface was dry but still squishy beneath. Who'd put in that window? Was this what grown-ups did in new places instead of trying to fall off bridges?

Lily shivered the length of her spine then opened the door and walked in, tromping through the whole downstairs, starting with the kitchen to get a glass of water. All the familiar furnishings they'd brought were sorted into rooms. There were two brown sofas in the living room, placed strategically to hide where Aunt Marta's "Sweetie" had sharpened its claws during a one month cat sit. There was Mom's fully unpacked computer desk set up in the study and Rose's "just for her own use" denim beanbag in the mostly empty family room.

Good to know she was in the right house, but there was still no sign of her family. She thudded upstairs, where the only closed door was her sister's, but the sarcastic girl band lyrics and syrupy chords seeping through suggested that Rose was inside. Lily knocked.

"Yeah?"

Opening the door, she saw everything neatly unpacked. Rose sprawled on her bed, which was centered on the right-hand wall. Her maple dresser with the climbing rose motif graced the left wall and her matching nightstand sat under the window. Cutesy anime girls with oversized eyes stared out from half a dozen posters and origami knick knacks dangled from strings in all four corners.

"Yeah?" Rose repeated, opening her eyes wide under her dark spiky hair, just like her anime pictures.

"Where is everyone?"

"You're there. I'm here. Mom's shopping. Dad's at work."

"He doesn't start 'til Monday."

Rose picked up the book lying next to her, and started flipping through without reading. "Take it up with him."

"What about the window in the front door?"

"Likewise."

"Dad put that in?"

"Uh-huh."

"Why?"

"What am I, the family news service?"

"Well, yeah, usually."

It wasn't quite true, but it made Rose smirk. Lily closed the door while the closing was good and went to clean her room and find some real clothes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

New School

 

The "quality" of light in New Mexico made Lily want to hide under her covers all day. If that glare was supposed to be one of the good points, they never should have left Seattle.

Lily threw back the blankets before she could sink too far into a new sulk. Her bed rested in the middle of the undecorated room not touching a single wall. The moving boxes had somehow claimed the wall space first, and now she sat surrounded on an island of unpacked bedding in a sea of partially unpacked cardboard. Yesterday's ambitions had not been enough to prepare her for today.

Her nightstand drifted to starboard, nearer to, but not touching a wall. On it was her pink suitcase, the one embroidered with the name "Lily" from two moves ago when she'd been young enough to own such goofy luggage. She'd set her clothes for today on top, but seeing her face in the mirror, she knew there was a problem.

Her face was bright red with sunburn. The rose colored top she'd planned for her first day of high school would never work.

Lily started picking through open boxes. Beneath a pile of bras and underwear, she found her pre-algebra notebook, a black camisole, and an aqua blouse with buttons. She took the blouse down to the laundry room, splatted it with water, and left it to de-wrinkle on delicate as she took her shower.

She had not wanted to start her new life as a beet. This should have been her last year of middle school, her chance to be knowledgeable and relatively secure. Instead, she was stuck in the middle of nowhere at a school where ninth graders were the youngest class in high school. Of course, high school could have been cool, in the right place and time, but not here, and not with a bright red sunburn. She'd had enough mishaps with performance make-up to know she couldn't cover the red without looking like a mud pie. Instead, she did the best she could with bronze tones on her lips and eyes, but just enough to draw attention away from her cheeks and nose, which were hopeless.

She checked her cell phone—still no signal. It was probably just as well. She'd checked email the night before and the two "here comes ninth grade!" messages from old friends in Seattle had pushed her sense of injustice beyond the ability to reply. She had neither cleared her old binder nor bought a new one, so she threw a half used spiral notebook into a shoulder bag along with her purse, a class schedule, and her new house key.

Lily tromped down the stairs for breakfast cultivating a healthy, growing snit.

Rose was already ensconced at the dinette table with a book and a bowl of cornflakes. She wore a light pink t-shirt and ruby red shorts, and she laughed when Lily marched in with a face between the two shades.

"Shut-up."

Rose kept laughing. Her gelled up curls were too stiff to move with her laughter.

"Wrong side of bed?" Dad asked from behind the coffee maker. He was already in work clothes, though his button up shirt could have used some ironing. He was not the sort of guy who cared, and Mom had given up on ironing for him years ago. Dad had a knack for making situations seem comfortable that extended to looking comfortable in his clothes. Maybe that was enough for a job in social services.

"I need my morning coffee," Lily said.

"Four more years." Her dad said it as a chant, like he was quoting some presidential campaign, and Lily remembered Jen's question about her dad's sayings.

"Mom would let me."

"Pity she's at work then."

"I am not too young for coffee." Lily posed with hands on tilted hips, shoulders slightly back, giving Dad a good view of their almost equal heights and her not so childish body.

He just smiled and said, "No coffee here until you're eighteen."

Lily grabbed her lunch and the brand new binder beneath it from the counter, took the toast from Dad's plate, and walked out the front door.

Only a few minutes early to the bus stop, but who rode the bus on the first day? Lily staked out a post to lean against and only nodded as a few other kids arrived.

On the bus, her eyes began to tear. Surely that was just the stupid New Mexico sun. Dad claimed artists came here for the light. Lily thought they came here because they were antisocial hermits who didn't like cities.

What they called a city here certainly couldn't inspire anyone. Dad had chosen Nuevo Nuevo, a sort of planned community about ten miles from the supposed city of Farmington. Farmington had one main thoroughfare and maybe a dozen restaurants, if you included McDonald's, of which there were two. Nuevo Nuevo didn't even have a McDonald's, just a sandwich and ice cream shop connected to a gas station. It was right at the center of the circles. The New Age, Feng Shui Lite guru who had designed Nuevo Nuevo just five years before, had laid it out as a spiral. From the center, you could drive around and around and see every block in Nuevo Nuevo. The spiral was paved only as far as the housing was built.

There was one old, straight road that ran clear across, cutting the spiral in half. That was where Lily had found the modern bridge yesterday, before she set out along the dirt path that took her to the other bridge, the one where she'd met Jen. Of course, Jen wouldn't be on the bus, since she had her own motorcycle, if it was even hers. Lily hoped Jen would be in at least one of her classes.

The bus made two stops on the straight road within the spiral and then headed out toward Farmington. On one side were well spaced two-story houses, much like hers, all built within the last five years. On the other, she could see only dirt and yucca plants, a sort of cactus with spiky leaves and purple flowers. Dad claimed people used it for everything from food to sandals. Lily found it lacking compared to trees and landscaping back home, well, in Seattle.

 

By the time the lunch bell rang, a sound like a screech with a choke at the end, Lily was definitely worried. The local girls mostly wore tank tops. Lily had never liked tank tops, and they conveniently hadn't been allowed at her old school. She felt self-conscious about the blue blouse she'd chosen. It was one of her favorites, made in Indonesia with light green flecks in the weave, but here it seemed too unusual. She needed camouflage. She couldn't switch to tank tops, with the way they made her shoulders look square, and well, just everything look bad. If she wasn't going that far, she could at least wear a solid colored tee-shirt tomorrow. That would be the camouflage clothing here. She could become a plain tee-shirts and jeans kind of girl, and her sunburn would fade. At least for now, no one could tell when she blushed.

She gathered her American history book and papers. No actual learning had taken place; the teacher had only listed what they would be learning about and how they MUST behave. The latter was the same polite fiction circulated on the first day of school everywhere Lily had lived. She wondered how long teachers had been saying it as she navigated the breezeways to her locker. Checking her cell phone, she still had no signal.

All day Lily had watched for but hadn't seen Jen and hadn't gotten past introductions with anyone else. It seemed like everyone here knew somebody in each class. Everyone else found someone to sit with or at least wave to if the seats were assigned. She'd known it was a small school, about 900 kids, but they came from two different junior highs, and with all the construction in Nuevo Nuevo, there had to be some other new students, didn't there? She hadn't been able to spot any in her first three classes.

Lunch bag in hand, everything else stacked in her locker, all excuses for delay forestalled, Lily walked slowly to the lunchroom. People around her seemed to whiz by. They were all laughing and talking, lots of sarcastic, high-pitched voices, sort of like her sister's music. Lily saw herself in slow mo.

Once inside the cafeteria, a whole new set of clangs and crashes and words added to the ambiance of school cafeteria grease smell and cheap fluorescent flicker. She was two-thirds of the way to the back door. It was open, and Lily wondered if students were allowed to eat outside. If she walked all the way through, would she be free or trespassing on some other crowds' terrain?

Lily glanced furtively at the tables she passed and a girl with frizzy blond hair said, "Hey, you're the new girl, Lily, right? You wanna sit with me?"

Lily knew that the kids who'd invite a stranger to sit at lunch were not always the best kids to know. This one wore a cotton dress with tiny purple flowers printed on the fabric. Not a wannabe then, possibly a goody-two-shoes.

"Sure, thanks," Lily said.

She sat and hoped for the best. "I guess you know my name, but I don't think I know yours."

"Dora Case. We're in all the same morning classes."

Lily felt guilt like a splash of hot liquid for not noticing someone who'd been in all her classes so far, but Dora kept smiling, so Lily unpacked her lunch: tuna on wheat, hardboiled egg, water bottle. It looked like a bit much but smelled like nothing.

"Where'd you move here from?"

"Seattle."

Dora's eyes opened wider. "Why?"

"My Dad had a new assignment for work, and my Mom found some job she liked."

"Whatta they do?"

"Dad oversees program improvements for the Department of Health and Human Services. Mom does accounting."

"Oh, my Dad's in banking." Dora smiled as if pleased by this. "Where's your Mom work?"

Lily blanked on the name of Mom's new firm and wondered how dumb that was going to sound. Usually people asked about her dad's job. "Accounting" was an intimidating word.

Just then, she spotted Jen, moving across the room with two girls in tank tops and a guy in a tight team tee-shirt. Jen was wearing her black leather jacket, but this time over a white tee-shirt and very faded jeans. She was a full head shorter than the guy walking with her, but it was clear from across the room that she was the popular one in that group.

"Dora, do you know that girl?" She pointed briefly. "Is she named Jen?"

"Dunno, but the people hanging out with her are seniors. Is she?"

Lily crashed into the fact that whatever the laws were around here, she should have guessed Jen was older from her motorcycle. But she was tiny, even compared to the girls beside her. Maybe she was just a couple inches shorter, but in her leather jacket, she looked slight, fine-boned and thin.

Heat rose to Lily's face, but she knew her sunburn would hide any blush. Jen wasn't the slightest bit burned, and that made Lily feel even worse.

Jen was pretty, popular, and a senior, not likely to pal around with Lily, who resolutely refocused her attention on Dora, "I don't know much about her. We just met in Nuevo Nuevo yesterday."

"Oh, you live out there?" Dora asked, "I'd love to live in those houses."

"Well, ours is still full of boxes."

"The developer might've been less than respectable, but those houses look great, and no matter what anyone says, I like two stories."

Lily nodded, "Something I should know about the developer?"

"Oh, the newspaper did a whole spread on Evan Parell a couple years back. He does Tai Chi in his yard and orders echinacea over the internet."

For a moment Lily thought that was the extent of it, and she wondered just how provincial the Farmington area and its newspaper was. Then Dora continued.

"He built a hogan, ya' know? It's like a little round spirit house. Some Navajo were real concerned he would do his own ceremonies or misuse their traditions. But he said it was a tribute to their shared heritage and architecture, like the spiral layout of Nuevo Nuevo was a tribute to the Anasazi."

Dora must have noticed her audience's blank incomprehension because she continued, "You know, the Ancestral Puebloans? Built lots of cliff dwellings, carved pictures in rock then disappeared?"

"Oh," Lily nodded again, and that seemed to be enough for Dora. For a moment Lily was caught by her memory of heat and figures disappearing from stone steps. Then her mind twisted sideways to the crowded lunch room that smelled of grease and sweat.

"You should be careful though. My dad thinks that developer is a devil worshiper, or worships Indian idols, or is maybe even an atheist, and there aren't any churches there yet. You'll have to come to Farmington for church. Why don't you come to mine this Sunday?"

Dora bobbed her head excitedly; Lily was stunned and didn't move.

"My family aren't really church-goers."

"My Dad's a preacher. Our congregation's Post-reform Conservative, but anyone's welcome to join us for services." Dora went into a detailed description of their congregation and how to find their church.

Lily looked around the cafeteria trying to memorize which groups sat where as she bit into her tuna sandwich. Who could she eat with tomorrow?

 

Arriving home after school hot and sweaty, Lily was greeted by a most unusual sight. Her sister Rose rushed from the back yard, eager for her help.

"Come help me teach some circus!" Then quieter, under her breath she said, "And try to make it look cool." Rose was dressed in her orange, red, and pink leotard and tights, a look Lily had never considered "cool," but she understood Rose's need to make friends here, so she resolved to be a good big sister, for the moment.

Lily dropped her stuff by the corner of the house as she followed Rose into their new backyard. Yesterday, it had been nothing but a patch of plain dirt, but now their circus practice rig was up. Dad had bought a portable set up, probably remembering the swing set he'd had to reassemble every time they moved when they were younger. He must have come home early to unpack it all, and Lily wondered if Rose had pleaded before even leaving for school. This looked like a Rose plan in action.

The tricks they'd learned for circus weren't much harder than what kids their age did in gymnastics, but even in Seattle where their circus school was well known, there was a certain glamour to performing "circus" stunts. Their home rig was a sixteen foot high bar supported by two metal poles, held stable by four cables staked to the ground. There were wires that ran up to pulleys, and there was currently a double trapeze set up, but mostly the kids were ignoring that.

Rose had out diabolos and juggling balls. Her friends, in their trying too hard, first day of school clothes, were attempting to juggle with one or two balls. Everyone was sweating and turning their backs to the glare, but other than that, they ignored the lack of shade in the un-landscaped yard. Lily and Rose demonstrated juggling three individually and then passing with three and five. They let the other kids throw balls in, and then they let everyone try it on their own a little more.

The first girl to tire of juggling probably couldn't see the balls with all the hair that hung in her face. Lily tried to teach her diabolo, which was just an oversized Chinese yo-yo, really. All a person needed to do was stay in one place, keep the groove of the diabolo on the string (which connected to sticks held in each hand), and maintain some kind of rhythm. Also, it worked well if you could feel the motion, so it wouldn't matter about the girl's hair.

The lesson started well enough, but then Hair-in-her-face-easily-bored started jerking the string, making the diabolo fall off. After dinging her own foot and almost poking a friend in the eye, she complained to Rose, "I thought you were going to show us real circus. What's all this stuff for anyway?"

Hair girl gestured to the circus rigging with the double trapeze. It was hard to explain to people about double trapeze. They always expected either flying trapeze, or at the very least, two different bars. A double trapeze was just a single bar hanging from two cords, but it was designed to be used by two people at once. The ends of the bar stuck out a few inches beyond the cords, providing an extra foot or handhold on each side.

When Rose hesitated to explain, Lily said, "We'll show you."

The bar was set a little high for Rose, so Lily said, "Flamenco routine" so she could start her sister with a boost. Rose punched the music on her ipod speaker set-up and then ran over to the blue, eight inch thick mat beneath the trapeze.

Both sisters froze, heads lowered, then looked up on the first loud beat of the music. They raised opposite arms, did one quick, Flamenco wrist twist, and Lily boosted her sister by the waist. Then the music got going and Rose spun herself up on the bar so Lily could pull in beneath her. They worked positions beside each other or with one up on the ropes while the other mirrored a move on the bar below. For their Sleeping Beauty pose, Rose lay suspended on Lily's feet. They both finished by dangling beneath the bar, twisted into an exotic tangle. When they finally came down to the mat, it was almost hot enough to burn their feet, but as with any performance problems, the sisters didn't let it show.

There was a prolonged hush that probably meant the kids were impressed. Then Hair-in-her-face-easily-bored whined, "What else can you do?"

Lily rallied when her sister looked like she might lose her temper and said, "Rose, do you know where the silks are?"

Lily quickly unfastened carabiners to take the trapeze off the cables so the silks, ten yards of shimmering red cloth on a swivel, could go up. Rose had gone to the shed to get the cloth, but Lily heard an annoyed "ouch" followed by a heavy stomp.

Her little sister stood framed by the shed door, heaps of red silks over her shoulder and in her arms, staring at her left hand, then down at a splat on the floor. Lily hurried over and saw the splat had eight legs, two big pinchers in front, and a long curved tail in back.

"Is that a scorpion?" she asked the assembled kids. It wasn't big, maybe a couple inches long, sort of like a spider-sized lobster.

Rose's new friends crowded around. "Yeah, that's a scorpion." "Darker than the kind I've seen." "Hey, I think that's a bark scorpion. My grandpa says they get here some years and they can kill you."

The last was from a chubby boy who took a step back as he said it.

"Naw, scorpions can't kill you."

"That kind can," the chubby boy said in an abrupt burst.

"Sometimes people are allergic--"

Rose finally interrupted with, "It really, really, hurts!" Lily couldn't see much of a mark, and there wasn't any swelling, but Rose had tears in her eyes, and whatever her faults, she'd never been a cry baby.

Lily asked, "Do any of you know what to do?"

Three kids shook their heads, but Hair-in-her-face-easily-bored said, "MMMM, ice. Keep your hand below your heart. Go to the doctor. Oh, and bring the scorpion in a bag."

Lily called, "Dad!" as she ran inside for ice and a baggie.

Dad came from the dining room with a pen in his hand, and Lily gave him the executive summary. He replied with, "Let's go to the doctor, at the very least we'll learn what to do next time." Dad tended to be overly calm in crisis situations; some people considered it admirable, but Lily was just used to it. People sometimes said she was just the same.

He quickly walked out back, switched off the ipod, and told everyone, "Come back some other time." Then he led the crying Rose over to the car.

Lily scooped the mashed scorpion into the baggie and hopped in beside her sister. "Here, put some ice on your hand and keep it low."

Rose was crying and shaking. Lily remembered when Rose was little and would quiver whenever she got mad. When was the last time she'd seen that? When had Rose grown up?

Dad followed the usual route to Farmington and seemed to know exactly where the town medical center was. It would have been easy to miss even with the little emergency sign and red cross out front, just one long rectangular building with multiple entrances.

They all piled in through the door marked "Open" and "Emergency." It seemed to be nothing more than a doctor's office that didn't even have anyone at the front desk. It smelled more of someone's spicy lunch than of antiseptic, and there were an old woman and a young boy waiting in plastic chairs to one side. But dad walked right up and dinged a bell that Lily had somehow overlooked. It took a full minute before a woman in blue and white came hurrying out.

"Can I help you?"

"My daughter's been bit by a scorpion."

"Stung. Has she been seen here before?"

"No."

"I'll need you to fill out some forms."

Dad nodded, seeming happy to conform to this bureaucratic delay, but Rose started thrashing her arms, crying in little gasps, and she dropped the bag of ice. The woman behind the counter only gave her a quick glance.

"It's okay, Rose. Keep still and keep your hand down," Lily said.

Dad was still working on the forms and the nurse, or whoever she was, looked like she might return to the other room. Rose sounded like she was hyperventilating.

"Please," Lily said louder than she meant to, holding out the baggy, "can you tell us if it's a bark scorpion or if maybe she's allergic? She doesn't get upset this easily."

The woman took the baggie, glanced once more at Rose, and left the room. By the time she came back, their dad had finished what he could of the forms, and they were both trying to calm Rose down. She kept flinging her arms, crying, and gasping. The little boy who'd been waiting before them had huddled up against the old woman, as if whatever Rose had might be contagious.

The nurse came back, accompanied by a doctor in a white coat this time. Her name tag said Dr. Crystal Parker, and there was a stethoscope in her pocket. She walked right over to Rose and said, "Could I have your wrist?"

Rose jerked it forward, and the doctor took her pulse, looked down her throat, and said, "Both rooms are taken, wait here." She came back with a needle and a swab to clean the skin, rubbed the swab on the inside of Rose's elbow, and then asked the nurse to hold her still while the needle went in.

"I'm sorry to keep you out here, but a room wouldn't really help. I'm Dr. Parker," she said to Dad. "Did your daughter get stung by that scorpion here in Farmington?"

"At our house, in Nuevo Nuevo."

"Well, we'll have to report it. That does look like a bark scorpion, and they don't usually come this far north. But it happens." Dr. Parker hesitated like there was more that could be said about when it happened, but continued with, "We'll have to record it, and I'd like you to stay here for a couple of hours."

Once Rose calmed down, the nurse took a full report on the incident. When Lily told her about the circus stuff she said, "Circus? Why do you do that? Did you used to be circus people?"

Lily tried to explain it was just a hobby some kids had, much like gymnastics, but the nurse went on and on like doing circus was the cause of the injury, and a scorpion would never have hidden under a baseball glove stored in their shed.

Lily went outside to calm down after being "polite" to the narrow-minded local. The afternoon sun felt like fire on her already burned skin. She hid under the first shady overhang, which happened to be in front of a gas station, and watched the cars go by. A red motorcycle with a diminutive black-clad rider passed.

"Jen!" Lily waved. Had Jen seen her? Lily found herself still waving even though the motorcycle had passed her by.

The bike turned at the next intersection, and Jen was soon parked in front of her, pulling off the familiar helmet. Brown and bronze curls fluffed and settled as if there was a breeze, but there wasn't.

"Something happened?"

"My sister got bitten by a bark scorpion."

 Jen nodded without surprise. "Did you see it happen?"

Lily shook her head.

"What did your Dad say?"

Lily remembered the questions yesterday about things her dad said. She felt a certain heat, but persuaded herself if was just her sunburn. "Not much, but he knew where to drive."

"Life follows," and with that Jen tugged her helmet back in place and was off. Lily stared after her wondering if she should be insulted or awed.

**  
**

 3

 

Rocks

 

Friday afternoon, when Lily thought she'd finally have some peace in her room, she looked out her window and saw a dusty Ford station wagon driven by a heavy-set woman in a light floral dress. As the woman stepped out on the driver's side, Dora, the preacher's daughter, stepped out from the other. Then two young boys piled out from the rear.

Lily's dad rushed to answer the doorbell before Lily made it down the stairs. His hair was damp and mussed, and the apron he wore suggested they'd have something with tomato sauce for dinner. He smiled at Dora and her family as he opened the door wide. "Hello, can I help you?"

"Francine Case," the woman answered, "Our girls met at Farmington High."

"Justin Thompson," her dad replied, shaking the out thrust hand, "Please come in."

"I can't stay a moment," she said as she walked in followed by the boys and Dora, who didn't say a word and didn't get introduced.

Lily thought the boys were probably still in grade school. Both seemed too clean, with button shirts tucked into long pants. Lily wondered if Dora's mom had dressed them up to come over, but then realized Dora's hair and dress were always tidy, just as they were now. Lily tugged her tee shirt straighter and moved a bit closer behind her dad.

The Case family had entered and shut the door behind them quickly, but Lily could still feel the heat let in from outside.

"Would you like to sit down and have something cold to drink?" her dad half turned toward the dining room table, as if he'd expected this company.

"No, thank you. We came to invite your family over for dinner this Saturday, sort of a welcome to the neighborhood."

"Oh, you don't have to—"

"It's our pleasure. I've written down our address and directions. Is six thirty okay?"

Dad took the little notepaper she handed him and sputtered, "Well, I'll have to check with my wife."

"Of course." She looked around as if expecting the wife to materialize when mentioned.

After just a little too long, Lily's dad said, "She's at work right now. Could we call you tonight?"

"Oh. Yes, of course. It was nice meeting you." Mrs. Case's eyes shifted around until they fell on Dora.

Dora ducked her head and echoed, "Nice meeting you." Then finally she looked at Lily and said, "Hope to see you tomorrow."

"Sure," Lily said.

Seeing them out the door, Lily felt her shoulders relax. No one had done anything really embarrassing. It was hardly her dad's fault if mom was at work and he wasn't right now. Still, Lily felt she could breathe deeper once the door was closed.

"Dad, we don't have to go to dinner."

"Why not?"

"Just, I don't like her that much, and I think it would be okay to say 'no.'"

He raised one eyebrow and reached out his hand in that fatherly hand to shoulder way. "It was very nice of that family to invite us over, and if we can, we ought to go."

 

On Saturday evening, Lily put on the one dress she owned that wasn't fancy or flirty. It was a safflower blue sundress with loose-cut sleeves just over the shoulders. She'd mentioned to her mom and Rose that Dora wore dresses to school every day, but they didn't seem inclined to take the hint.

"We're going to be late," Lily called to her mom as she crossed the kitchen.

"We'll be fine," she replied as she pulled out a bottle of wine to bring.

They pulled up at Dora's house in Farmington at 6:38. Even Lily could admit that didn't count as late.

Dora's house was ranch-style in a way that really looked like a ranch. Her driveway was a long strip of rocky dirt that looped at the end. The house sort of bent around the loop, all one story with a long front porch. The walls were stucco and the roof was metal, but didn't quite line up in two places, as if someone had added the rooms at each end, pulling them forward to close in on the driveway. They even had a picket fence enclosing a field on one side, so Lily thought it might have been a real ranch at some point.

When they knocked, Dora's mom answered the door, wearing a solid green dress beneath a green and white checked apron. Her hair waved back into a bun, and Lily realized she was pretty in a mom sort of way. As they walked in, Dora and the boys lined up beside her, and then their Dad stood up from an easy chair and took his place on the other side of the kids. He looked sort of scrawny compared to his wife, but he had posture that a band leader would have appreciated. Lily's mom handed the bottle of wine to Mrs. Case, who nodded and smiled.

"Thank you. This is my husband, Don Case, and I'm Francine," She said looking at Lily's mom the whole while.

The grown-ups began to shake hands as Dad said, "My wife, Leanne Thompson, and I'm Justin. Our daughters, Lily and Rose."

"And you've met Dora. These are her brothers, Craig and Sean."

Everyone smiled, and Mrs. Case said, "You kids run along. We'll call you in a little bit for dinner."

The two young boys invited Rose to play a board game. Dora, flicking imaginary dust from one of her usual flowered dresses, motioned Lily down the hall.

Her room was pink with cloth framed pictures of horses and the clichéd poster of a kitten dangling from a branch that said, "Hang in there." She had a picture of Jesus surrounded by little children hanging over her bed and little porcelain animal figurines along her windowsill. Lily couldn't think of a thing to say.

Then she noticed an embroidery hoop propped up on the nightstand. The half finished picture was clearly a bunch of flowers, but what got Lily's attention were the knots. Instead of just sewing a design, this embroidery had a cluster of brown knots sticking out to form the seeds on a sunflower.

"Did you do that?" Lily asked.

"Oh, yeah," Dora said, "It's just a kit my mom bought me. I've been working on it since Christmas."

"I've never seen anything like it, with the different knots and stitches and stuff. Is it hard to do?"

"Not at all; here, I'll show you." So she pulled extra cloth and thread from her nightstand and taught Lily knots and stitches until dinner.

Dinner was steak and potatoes. Dora and her brothers almost never spoke, and Lily copied them. Rose kept trying to sound smart, but no one seemed impressed.

"I hear you're an accountant," Mr. Case said to Lily's mom.

"Yes, I'm working with Haast Business Services."

"I'm a VP with the Bank of New Mexico, just down the street from you, surprised we haven't run into each other, but you probably don't work full time."

"Oh, I do—"

Rose butted in with, "Mom works lots wherever we are. But Dad's hours are usually more flexible."

Mr. Case looked down and cut a piece of his steak, but Dad tried to sound amused, "I do a lot of special projects for the Child Welfare Agency. So I spend most mornings in the office but can work from home some afternoons when I'm not in the field. It's worked well for us."

"How nice," said Mrs. Case. "What led to your working with Child Welfare?"

Lily felt like her parents lifestyle and parenting were on trial, but Dad gave no sign of noticing. Lily also noticed that both her mom and dad had been served a full glass of the wine they'd brought, but Mrs. Case didn't have any, and her husband had only a small amount in his glass. Each of the kids had been provided a large glass of milk.

Dad began his stock answer to questions about his work. "I was raised mostly by my grandparents, but there was a children's home not far away, and I used to bring them toys and treats. I'm sure I was trying to compensate, not knowing why I'd been so lucky. But it meant I was always thinking of what could be done for those kids. I came up with ideas like group homes, mentor programs, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, before anything like that came to my town. I guess it became sort of a calling, and I've always been able to find meaningful work in project development or system management."

"I'm impressed," said Mr. Case. "Not many men these days follow a goal like that. You should come to church with us tomorrow. I think you'd like our congregation."

"Well thank you, but we're not really church-goers."

A hush fell, like well-aimed bird droppings, across the room.

"It's okay, we still have good values," Rose said. "Dad taught us the golden rule right along with the tragedy of the commons."

Lily had heard Rose use that line before. It might have worked with grown-ups on the West Coast, but it fell flat here.

Mom said, "We do appreciate the offer. Could you pass the carrots, please?"

Food was passed, but dinner didn't last much longer. Lily wondered if she should ask to go to church with Dora, just to make it clear her family wasn't anti-church. She'd gone with friends before, but it would be more of a hassle now, since someone would have to drive her to Farmington. Besides, Dora wasn't her friend. Instead, she was the preacher's daughter. Lily wasn't sure going to church with Dora would really help her family fit in, even here.

 

            Sunday morning, Lily wanted wide open spaces. She put on lots of sunscreen, especially where her nose had peeled after last weekend. She filled the water bottle for her bike, extra water bottles for her bike pack, and even hunted up a pump to fix the tires if need be.

            "Going someplace?" Mom was in a loose tee-shirt and silky pajama pants. It was rare to see her lounging in the morning. Even her daughter, living in the same house, didn't see her mom sitting around in pajamas much, but Lily wasn't up for a cozy morning at home. She needed to get out.

            "Just around."

            "Okay," Mom answered, with a soft smile that didn't reach her eyes.

            Dad would have said to be home for lunch, but mom had never been that way, even when Lily was little enough to want it. Mom's way was to encourage each person's initiative, at least until they caused problems. Here mom was in her PJ's, probably the first time Lily had seen her not dressed for work in a month, but she was willing to let Lily go, just like that. The way she studied Lily's row of water bottles, however, showed clear concerns about seeing her daughter bike off into the desert. She smiled for real, like she was pleased with Lily.

            "Why'd you agree to move?" Lily asked. They'd relocated before, but never to someplace so isolated and not on such short notice. Her mother had found a job, but it wasn't that close to what she wanted.

            "It mattered a lot to your dad. Sometimes that's enough. I think his mom had family around here."

           Lily gave her a quick hug before leaving, wondering if it was really that simple. She didn't know much about that grandmother. "I'll be back by lunch."

 

            She'd planned to pedal straight out on the highway, but when she reached the dirt path that led to the old bridge, Lily turned. The path started just after the main bridge, along the side yard of an old ranch that faced the highway. There was a round, earthen shed with a bark covered roof on the side where she passed. Beyond the ranch, there was only rock, dirt, and stubborn plants. She also spotted a lizard that matched its rock until it moved, and a long skinny one that skittered under a bush as she approached.

           When she reached the bridge where she'd almost fallen the last weekend, Lily perched on her bike, feeling vulnerable and a little stupid, but she didn't feel any strange heat or force. Then she saw someone far up the ravine and knew it had to be Jen.

            The person was too far away for Lily to make out her face. The light and dark curls and black leather jacket were right, but that could be a coincidence. Lily watched her move, rock to rock, and somehow became very certain. She walked her bike to the end of the bridge and started locking it up before even wondering at her presumption. Jen was a senior. Lily was a freshman. She stood by her bike for a long time, undecided, and then saw the tiny figure wave. Could she know it was Lily, just standing here with a bicycle?

            But the wave was definitely an invitation. Lily grabbed a water bottle and hiked along the edge of the ravine until she'd covered most of the distance and could see a good route down. She still skidded and fell on loose gravel before reaching the bottom, and the scrapes on her thigh made her regret wearing shorts.

            Jen was in jeans again, and still wearing her leather jacket, open over a deep blue blouse. Her hair was tied with a scarf that might be silk, also blue, and wrapped around to hold bronze curls back the way a headband would. Jen began picking her way along the larger rocks as soon as Lily reached her. Lily scrambled behind, trying to maneuver into talking range.

            "How'd you like the first week of school here?"

            Jen shrugged. Lily wanted to say something like, "Are you really a senior?" or "How can you be so popular?" but both sounded childish and sort of like she'd been spying. Instead, she asked, "Are you looking for something?"

            "Yeah."

            "What?"

            "Whatever. Maybe like the stairs you found last time."

            Lily shivered in a curiosity killed the cat way, but emboldened by the approving tone she asked, "In a creek bed?"

            Jen shrugged again. Maybe she was in a snit, but she didn't look like it. Then again, she hadn't shown much reaction last week when she was accused of (and denied) trying to push Lily off the bridge. It had been easy to forget the weird bits during the week at school, but now Lily physically remembered how she'd felt a hot push against her legs and the warm pull on the mesa later. She also remembered about being sun burned.

            "Do you have sunscreen on?" Lily asked.

            "No."

            "Don't you burn?"

            "No."

            At that point Lily remembered the water bottle in her hand and took a drink. "Do you want some?"

            "That's alright."

            Jen hadn't seemed concerned about water last week either. "They say you need a gallon of water a day if you're out in the desert. And even dark skinned people can get sun burns or skin cancer." Not that Jen's skin was even as dark as Lily's. "How do you do it?"

            Jen shrugged.

            "Are you always this quiet?"

            Jen shrugged again, still picking her way down the wash.

            Lily kept pace silently after that, choosing her own path along the rocks and wondering why she'd come looking for Jen, which she clearly had, and whether it was like the way she'd kind of wanted, but also really not wanted, to fall from the bridge.

            Then Jen moved quickly sideways, up the edge of the creek bed. She sent down a cascade of dust and pebbles as she climbed and then used her leather clad arm to wipe more rubble from the face of a large, vertical stone. She looked back over her shoulder and motioned to Lily. When Lily paused to look for a stable path up, Jen said, "Curious? At all?"

            Lily thought about cats but scurried up, sending dust and gravel everywhere. Sure enough, Jen had found a rock with something carved in it. The picture wasn't clear, but one part definitely looked like a person. It looked like someone had taken something pointy and hammered little dots and divots to make a person, a bent over person holding something, and maybe caught in a storm. There were lots of little curvy bits around the picture.

            "How'd you find that?" Lily asked.

            Jen shrugged and just kept staring at the rock. After a while she said, "It's Kokopelli, you know. That's his flute, and that's his penis."

            Lily felt her face flush, like some little kid, but Jen just said it so matter of factly, and once she said it, Lily couldn't help admitting it. "Must have been drawn by a guy. They're way hung up on size." She hoped that sounded worldly and not childish.

            "Could be," Jen smiled, almost like a normal teenager for a moment. "What do you think of all this?" and she pointed to the curves and spirally bits drawn around Kokopelli.

            "Dunno, a storm maybe," but even as she said it, Lily thought of what else it might be if a guy had been drawing it and ... No, she wasn't going to say that.

            "Or maybe Kokopelli's jerking off," Jen said it for her, for all the world like she could read Lily's mind.

            Lily tried to smile knowingly, but didn't meet Jen's eyes.

            "He's supposed to be a fertility god, among other things." Jen added.

            They looked at the picture a little while longer, before Jen started looking around, up out of the ravine, and along each bank. Then Jen scrambled back to the lowest point, where they'd mostly been walking, and systematically looked forward, back, and to each side again.

            Lily wondered if she was memorizing the spot or looking for landmarks that would help her find it again. Lily noticed a bush with a center trunk like a lowercase "r" and the rock itself, which seemed much more sheer and vertical than most of the large rocks up that high on the sides of the ravine. She wondered if Jen had spotted the vertical rock and brushed away the rubble thinking it would have been a good spot to draw something. But why carve something like that into a rock?

            Jen was moving again, and Lily followed, looking higher than she had before for flat, vertical surfaces.

            She was about ready to give up and ask to turn back when she spotted just the rock she was looking for. She scampered up as Jen had and brushed loose rock away with her fingers.

            For a moment her hands seemed to snag and burn. She looked at her palms, expecting blood, or fire ants, or something. They were just dusty. The heat she'd felt spread like lightening through her body, and Lily opened her water bottle only to realize it was empty. Then she began to shiver, and she crouched against the flat face of rock, as if it could protect her from the strangeness she felt.

            This rock was more worn and scarred than Jen's had been. If anyone had carved out little dots, they'd be unrecognizable beside the damage that nature had done. But Lily reached out again, wiping away dust. There wasn't any unusual heat now, just the sun on the back of her hand, but there were small holes. Lily found what seemed to be a curved row of dots on one of the least weathered parts.

            Jen had climbed up beside her and reached out to brush the stone.

            "I bet you're right," Jen said. "This used to have something."

            Jen laid her hand right on top of Lily's as they both brushed at the stone. For a moment, Lily was ready to ask about the weird heat that burned her hand and about what she'd felt on the bridge. She was sure Jen had answers, but Jen snapped her hand and attention away, and the words dried in Lily's throat.

            Then Jen was heading back down along the ravine, and Lily could only follow her. Despite the moment of strange heat and being out of water, Lily wanted to find another easel-like rock.

            It didn't take long. Near a bend in the creek they both looked up and headed toward it. There was a large rock ledge, sort of hanging over the creek, a bit past vertical. There were divots and drawings on this one. The carved part showed Kokopelli again, not quite as anatomically exaggerated as before, but still clearly naked. Around him were drawn distinct spirals, and between two of the spirals was a small person with a very big head (and nothing to show if it was a boy or a girl).

            Jen rested her hand beside the picture, and Lily hesitated only a moment before doing the same. It didn't burn like the last one. Maybe there was a slight warmth and tingling on her hand, but she could also have imagined it.

            "What does it mean?" Lily asked, not sure which "it" she meant.

            "I don't know. Yet." With that Jen started her marking position routine again, this time looking for all the world like a dog pointing or scenting the wind. First she looked forward and up, then to each side, behind. She slid down to do it all again from lower ground. Lily was just about to join her at the bottom when Jen made her way back up and squatted, staring at the rock face.

            Today, Lily was wearing a watch, and after a full ten minutes, she asked, "What do you see in it?"

            "I don't know, do you?"

            "Not really, but I think I should go back before I get sunburnt even with sunscreen on." She didn't bother to mention that she was out of water and not sure if she was imagining things.

            "Okay," said Jen, as if she really didn't care if Lily stayed or left.

            Lily stood up more than a little annoyed. They weren't exactly friends, and Lily had sort of insinuated herself into whatever it was Jen was doing, but most people would at least say something polite. Now Lily had to walk all the way back by herself, without water, in what was getting close to full noon sun. She dusted off where she'd been sitting.

            Just when she was almost too far to hear, Jen called out, "Next week, maybe?"

            "Could be," Lily said.

            On the walk back she wondered if she felt better because Jen wanted to see her again or because she hadn't promised to come back. Either way, she didn't climb up where the ground was flat and the walking easy. She picked her way along the rocks, and while she didn't find anything new, her memory of her rock and the first carving was good enough to lead her right to them. She stopped and looked when she came to the funny, naked man, but she didn't touch the rock. Somehow it felt wrong to touch this carving, even if it might have just been made by some guy with serious body image issues.

            The sun was directly overhead when Lily made it to her bike. She drank over half the water in her pack and decided to bring food and more sunscreen if she came again. Jen's motorcycle was nowhere to be seen as Lily started pedaling back the way she'd come, but even knowing it was irrational, she wasn't worried about Jen.

            There was only Lily and the open dirt path until she could reach the newer bridge and the scrap of desert highway. The land seemed hot, but alive, around her. A sun bathing lizard didn't bother to run when she rode past. All the barely green plants seemed more prominent and healthy than they had before.

            Lily slowed down a ways before the modern bridge. Some guy was sitting there with his bike parked right across the path. He wasn't much bigger than her, but Lily tensed up and gripped her handlebars tighter. It looked like a trap, probably just a stupid, annoying kid trap, but she'd heard some scary things about high school guys. Who could say if this boy might be dangerous and not just annoying?

            She stopped a good ten feet before his roadblock, keeping one foot on a pedal. She tried to remember the bike tricks she'd learned in circus, not that bike had been one of her specialties, but there had been a technique for flipping a bike forward without much warning. She waited for the boy to speak first.

            He didn't. What was it with taciturn people in New Mexico?

            "So what's with this?" she finally asked.

            "Just wanted to introduce myself. I'm Xavier. This is my family's land you're crossing."

            He looked like a total geek with his tucked in tee shirt and his combed back hair. He sounded even stranger, like a cocker spaniel playing bulldog. But he was bigger than Lily, and his thin arms showed a fair amount of muscle.

            "I thought it was a public trail."

            "Private land, but you're welcome to cross here. I just wondered why and thought I'd come ask. We go to the same school, you know."

            "Sorry, hadn't noticed."

            "But have you noticed about her?"

            He pointed with a jerk of his chin toward where she'd left Jen. Lily didn't think he could see past the curve in the ravine from here, definitely not as far as where she'd left Jen today, but maybe from an upper window of his house. She glanced at the big ranch house, the one with the peculiar round building out in back. She imagined him spying with binoculars.

            "What should I have noticed?"

            "Should? There's no 'should' to it."

            "Well, this has all been very interesting, Xavier, but if you'd just move your bike—"

            "No problem," he said, sounding like he'd never meant any harm. "If you ever do notice, and want to compare notes, you know where I live."

            Lily nodded with only a hint of a grimace as he moved his bike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4

 

Crazy

 

            The next day, Lily was late leaving English, and after visiting her locker, she decided to cut through another building to see if that got her to history faster. She knew Jen's locker was along the way. Not that it was a big deal, but she'd resolved to speak to Jen at school this week. The first week of school, Jen never seemed to notice her, and Lily hadn't wanted to intrude once she knew Jen was a senior. But if they were going to be friends now (and hadn't Jen implied that by saying they'd get together next weekend?) then they could at least speak to each other at school. Beside, Lily hadn't really made other friends yet, so...

            She tucked her binder under her left arm and pushed her hair back with her right. She was wearing jeans and a pale green t-shirt, so she felt pretty inoffensive. Now she had to look grown up and casual when she saw Jen standing at her locker.

            "Hi, Jen," she said.

            "Hi, Lily." For a moment, the full intensity of Jen's gaze, the way she seemed to see every detail, focused on Lily's face, and the noise in the hallway dimmed by comparison. Lily noted that Jen wore make-up at school, but it didn't really make her look any different, just more Jen, with her fine bones and pale skin.

            Then the warning bell rang and another voice, on the other side of the locker said, "Hey, Jen!"

            It was a guy's voice, though at first he was hidden behind the locker door and Lily couldn't see who it was. Jen turned away, saying, "Hi, Dave." Her locker door shut, and her thin white fingers spun the lock. Dave looked like a football player, though Lily was too new here to know for sure. He had curly brown hair and sleepy blue eyes, not the sort of boy anyone would ignore. Lily watched Jen walk away beside Dave without even a backward glance.

            It stung, but Lily wasn't so naive as to be offended by something like that. If Lily had a boyfriend, she was bound to forget things like freshman girls she hung out with on weekends. As Jen and Dave disappeared around the corner, Lily realized she should move or she'd be late to history, and her history teacher was kind of strict.

            She shook her head and started to step forward, but a really big guy stepped squarely in front of her. It was beyond easy to believe this one played football, what was hard was believing he could still be in high school. In that first moment she registered the shaving stubble and crooked leer, the bulging crossed arms on the chest in front of her. The next moment she noticed the two friends leering behind him.

            "Well, what do we have here?"

            That's when the second bell rang, they'd be tardy for sure, but the guys didn't seem to notice. In Seattle, she had not been the kind of kid these things happened to. Her circus crowd wasn't the most popular and she wasn't that prominent within it, but there was strength in belonging. She tried to duck quickly around the bully, but his friends moved forward so she had to stop or bump into one of them.

            The one who'd first confronted her reached forward to lift her chin, not too hard, but she felt it could be. "Whatcha want little girl, a big guy of your own?"

            Lily's throat dried up and she wished she hadn't taken that step forward. If she'd only run back the other way, her biggest problem now would be being late for class. Sweat dampened her shirt as she stood frozen between the three big guys, fingers tightening on her binder.

There was a scraping clang across the hall as someone kicked up on a locker, grabbed the top, and hoisted himself into the two foot space between lockers and ceiling. He was lanky, and looked ridiculously posed lying on his side and propping his head up on one arm in that narrow space atop the lockers. His gray shirt was half untucked and dust trickled off the lockers as he shifted, but Lily recognized him as Xavier and saw that the three football guys were looking at him too. The rest of the hall was already empty.

            "Going for the babies now?" Xavier asked.

            "Whatcha want, crazy boy?"

            "Nothin', just waitin' for the show. You have no idea who the new girl is, huh?"

            "What's to know?" He gave Lily a much more pointed look.

            "Oh nothin'. Just have your fun. I'm sure your family can handle it. You know the principal has halls this period. Should pass by any time now."

            "You're such a freak." The big guy said, but he was already turning away, and his friends went with him. They strutted off as if nothing had ever happened.

            Once they were gone, Xavier slid over the edge and jumped down with a loud thump. He dusted off and tucked his shirt back in.

            Lily backed away down the hall, wondering if she ought to run, even as she said a quiet, "Thanks."

            Xavier just shook his head and snorted, before walking the other way.

            In the quiet halls Lily felt like a loser, some mousy new kid who couldn't explain being late. She walked meekly into history class, where the teacher already had the board half filled with notes on "New Mexico- Early Statehood."

            Her tiny but hard as diamonds history teacher said, "Sorry you missed the beginning of our lesson, Lily." She handed her a yellow detention slip and added, "I'll expect a two page report about our state's origins and symbols by the beginning of class tomorrow."

 

            That afternoon, Lily had been diligently staring at a book about New Mexico through ten minutes of detention when Xavier arrived and winked at her. He handed his detention slip to the teacher on duty then shuffled around to a seat on the far side of Lily. He sat sprawled with his limbs well beyond the borders of the desk, but pulled out a notepad and got right to work. He soon had a binder and several loose sheets of paper cluttering up his space.

            Lily tried to ignore him and focus on history, on the extra work her teacher so thoughtfully provided when she'd assigned her to detention. She'd written, "New Mexico is known as the 'Land of Enchantment' although its official motto is: 'Crescit Eundo' or 'It grows as it goes.' On January 6, 1912, it became the forty-seventh state, but its capital, Santa Fe, was settled in 1607, making it the oldest of America's capital cities."

            A piece of white binder paper appeared in front of her, and Lily could not have sworn that it came from her left, let alone that Xavier had passed it. She glanced toward the monitor, but the teacher seemed caught up in her own paperwork.

            The note said, "Were those guys bothering you for a reason? Did it have anything to do with Jen?"

            Lily didn't want to get caught passing notes, but her curiosity got the better of her. She wrote, "No idea. What were you implying about who I was?"

            She glanced at the teacher, who still seemed to be caught up in her work, and turned to pass the note back, but Xavier gave a single shake of his head, almost like a shiver, and set his right hand flat on his desk.

            Lily wasn't sure what that meant. But she turned the note over and set it at the edge of her desk nearest to Xavier. She tried to act like she was doing homework while she watched for another signal out of the corner of her eye.

            She couldn't see Xavier well this way, but she could see his shirt was tucked in, and his hair was combed back, like when she first met him. Only he didn't look quite so clean cut now, maybe more like a kiss-up delinquent. Or was she just filling that in from her new information? She almost missed how he reached out and took the note from her desk.

            A couple minutes passed, and she'd gone back to actually reading about history when the paper landed in front of her again. He'd written, "It was BS. Your family is nothing compared to his, but he might not check if he doesn't notice you again. You really don't want him to notice you. So, what's with you and Jen?"

            Lily didn't like what Xavier implied, but it made her more impressed by his intervention. If he was telling the truth, he'd gotten involved just to help her. Of course, he probably only did it to get information. And he seemed a little bit crazy. But seeming crazy might be his way of getting by in this town. Hadn't the football player called him crazy boy? And his writing in the note was neat, grammatical, and correctly spelled, a little different from how he'd spoken in the hall. It spun her curiosity up like a top. Still, whether he was crazy or not, she wasn't going to tell him anything about Jen; she just didn't know what she should write.

            For a long time she didn't write back. She tried to focus on history, but mostly she wondered what the best next step would be. Finally she wrote, "Nothing to tell, sorry."

            She placed the note face down on the edge of her desk, and sure enough, Xavier managed to take it. Nothing further happened during her hour of detention, and Lily wasn't sure if she felt disappointed or relieved.

 

            After detention, she waited in front of the school for her dad to pick her up. The school secretary had actually called him at work, for just one tardy, to let him know his daughter had detention and would not go home on the bus. She'd mentioned that they could schedule a different detention day if necessary, but her dad, being the agreeable sort, had said he'd arrange to pick her up today.

            The waiting was the hard part. Lily didn't want to sit in front of the school doing homework like a geek, but just standing there she started to worry. What time did football practice get out? And what did Xavier mean by, "You really don't want him to notice you"? She didn't even know the guy's name.

            Her dad pulled up within ten minutes. Lily put on an only slightly fake solemn expression, and walked briskly toward the car. They didn't talk until she was settled and they'd pulled away from the school.

            "Hey kiddo, you trying out for trouble-maker at the new school?"

            "No. I just have a really strict history teacher, and the class before got out late."

            Her dad didn't reply too fast. He gave the impression that he took time to think about what she'd said. "Is this a real problem between these two classes, or something you can take care of by hurrying a bit?"

            Lily knew she could play her cards such that dad would talk to her English teacher and make sure they didn't run late again, but she really didn't want him getting involved.

            "No, dad. It was only today, and I'll take a different route next time."

            "Tell me a bit about your history class."

            Lily obliged, knowing her dad wouldn't fuss about one tardy if she let him know everything else was all right. He really was a basically fair guy, even to his kids. Besides, if she kept on talking, he wouldn't ask who else she'd been talking to or if she'd made any new friends. Rose had brought kids home from school twice in the last week. She seemed to be getting a lot of mileage out of the new house and the newly stocked refrigerator. Even the scorpion sting had worked out in Rose's favor, garnering extra attention. But Lily hadn't brought anyone home and didn't want to. All the kids here still seemed too weird.

            "Dad, why'd we move here?"

            "Discrepancies, you know how it goes. There's a Federal oversight committee, an improvement plan, and then follow up inspections until—"

            "But why you? There are other inspectors. They wouldn't have made you come here."

            Dad was quiet and nodding. "I guess I sort of wanted to see this area. It's where my mom came from, you know?"

            Lily hadn't known, or she hadn't remembered, until her mom had mentioned it. She didn't know much about that grandmother, only that she'd left when her dad was just a baby. Even though her dad had been raised by his dad and other relatives, Lily had always figured that losing his mom must have led to him working for child welfare. But New Mexico?

 

            When they arrived home, her sister was in the living room half buried in a box of fabric.

            "What are you doing?" Lily asked.

            "Good to see you too, sis," said Rose, showing an exaggerated smile to their dad. "I'm making cloth covered picture frames for home ec. Won't I make someone a good little wife someday?"

            Dad nodded. "Do the boys have to do it, too?             "Yeah."

            "Well then you'll all be equally prepared as good little wives."

            Rose balanced her chin on her index finger and gave her most simpering smile. To Lily it looked like the smiles on anime girls, but she knew better than to say that around Rose.

            So she left her dad and sister to it as she snagged yogurt and diet soda from the fridge, then went to her room to do the rest of her homework. It really wasn't so much. When she finished at five, the afternoon light was streaming down the stairs from the upper landing window. It might have been the first time Lily appreciated the light in New Mexico, but she was distracted by her father, on a step stool, painting the window to block half the light.

            He'd painted a diamond a little right of center on that big upper floor window.

            The outline of the diamond was in black, as was a double border of rectangles, filled in like red and gold brickwork. If the rectangles formed a frame, it centered around the diamond, meaning the brick pattern had to be wider on one side. As she came out, dad was painting blue, like a mat, between the frame and the diamond.

            "Does this have anything to do with Rose's home ec. project?"

            "Not at all, why?"

            "Just verifying that you're all independently crazy. Should I start some frozen pizza for dinner?"

            "I was planning to make meatloaf, and your mom won't be home for another hour, at least."

            Lily gave him a stare that meant, "You don't really expect me to eat meatloaf on the same day I had detention," but he didn't seem to notice.

            "How about if I make tomatoes stuffed with spinach and cream cheese as an appetizer for now, and I'll steam some nice healthy broccoli, to be ready with the pizza when mom gets home?"

            Dad stood silhouetted by the window, paintbrush in hand, and said, "Sure dear, that would be lovely."

            Sometimes Lily liked her dad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5

 

Bacon

 

            The next Sunday, Lily woke before the rest of her family, but couldn't decide what to do. Jen had suggested they meet up, but Jen completely ignored her at school. Other than the one incident on Monday, when saying "hi" had gotten her a moment's attention and then a heap of possible trouble, it was as if Lily was invisible to Jen. And it didn't appear that the guy, Dave, was even Jen's boyfriend. He was just one of many guys who would walk beside Jen, seeming totally attentive and attended to, until the next person, usually a guy, took his place.

            The only reassuring aspect Lily had observed was that Jen seemed to ignore all but one or two people at any given time. So it wasn't personal when she ignored Lily.

            Lily packed extra sunscreen, lots of water, and some nuts and brought them out to her bike, but then she went to practice trapeze instead. Her dad had been busy this last week. In addition to installing three small diamond shaped windows and painting the big window upstairs, he'd tied a shade tent over the practice rig, so she could practice her trapeze and silks routines in the shade. Unfortunately, it was often too hot by afternoon, even in the shade.

            As she mounted the bar with a Rock and Roll (then did twenty more for exercise), Lily wondered how long she'd keep practicing circus. It had been cool in Seattle, when she had a team and most of them went to the same school, and they all went to see Cirque du Soleil when it came to town. But it seemed like every time her family moved, she kept her old interests only until she found something new. Soccer lasted from Eugene through the first season in Seattle. Girl Scouts lasted from Sacramento through the first month in Eugene. All the surfing and beach stuff ended abruptly when she left San Diego. You couldn't set up a practice beach in your backyard.

            But maybe circus would be different. She did a Flip, Russian Splits, and ran through her solo trapeze routine a few times.

            Lily told herself she could go biking even if she didn't want to meet up with Jen. If she didn't try to get to the old bridge, she wouldn't have to use the trail that Xavier said was private property. Maybe biking was going be her new "thing" in Nuevo Nuevo, or maybe just something extra. At least it didn't require any other people. The only other person she'd seen on a bicycle here was Xavier.

            She got on her bike and headed out of town across the new bridge. She went right past Xavier's sprawling house with the circular shed in back, ignoring the path she'd taken before. She biked past two other well spaced farms, or maybe they weren't farms, since they didn't seem to have any crops or animals. They were just houses that looked like farm houses and had a lot of dry land around them. One looked sort of like a junkyard, with old, partially dismantled cars and trucks lined up on one side.

            After the third non-farm, there was a dirt road leading left. Lily took it and then took the next dirt road that veered left. Soon, she was approaching the old bridge, and realized that she'd taken herself there despite it all. Jen's motorcycle was parked on the far side, and Jen stood on the bridge, about where Lily had almost fallen, or maybe been pushed, two weeks before.

            "Hi," Lily said, as she pulled up and parked her bike.

            "Were you really going to jump before?" Jen asked.

            "No."

            "What if you had?"

            Lily balked at the weirdness of the memory, a sudden flash of heat and shivers, but talking about it, now, here, with Jen, felt right.

            "I'd either have died or not."

            "And if you had?"

            "Dunno. That would sort of be the end, wouldn't it?"

            "You think so?"

            "I'm not religious."

            "So?"

            "So, probably it just ends for me and I never know anything else."

            "But what if there is somewhere else? Do you think some people might get there by dying?"

            "I'd be the last person to know."

            "Wouldn't that be the last person to get there?"

            Lily looked at Jen, really looked at her for the first time that day. Jen was wearing solid black: tight black jeans, black halter top, black leather jacket. And then there was a white scarf, like something Snoopy would wear when flying imaginary planes. It shouldn't have looked good on her. White wasn't supposed to look good on people with pasty skin and light brown hair, but everything seemed to look good on Jen.

            Lily wanted to ask why Jen ignored her at school or if she'd felt anything weird on the bridge that day, but instead she said, "Do you ever eat?

            "Sure. I even cook. Are you hungry?"

            Lily wasn't starving at the moment, but she hadn't eaten yet, and she usually did eat breakfast.

            "Are you?" she asked.

            "Come on. My place is only a mile down the road. I'll go slow enough for you to bike."

            Really, Jen made lots of little stop-and-go jaunts, stirring up plenty of dust as Lily biked full out. They were continuing on the dirt road that crossed the old bridge. Lily could see the back edge of her housing development not so far away to her left. The houses on this road were farther apart than in her neighborhood, but closer together than where Xavier lived. Most of them looked awful, like they'd fall down if they were built anyplace where it snowed.

            Jen pulled into a driveway on the right that cut between two identical manufactured homes and widened out to a parking area in the rear. The parking area looked a bit like the junkyard Lily had passed earlier, except that most of the cars were not yet dismantled. Jen didn't offer any instructions, so Lily just parked her bike and followed Jen back to the house on the right.

            The kitchen was to the left of the front door, a narrow walk-through with white counters and brown cupboards on each side. Jen washed her hands at a metal sink and opened one cupboard. There was a shelf labeled "Jen" (and also one labeled "Ella" and one labeled "Grace"). Jen took practically everything from her shelf and moved it to the counter.

            "You do eat bacon, don't you?"

            Lily nodded, and Jen went to the fridge, which looked like an avocado relic from the seventies. She pulled out bacon (also labeled "Jen") and started laying slices in a cast iron frying pan.

            "Should I help?" Lily asked.

            "You have a favorite bacon dish?"

            "Not really."

            "Then no. I'll make samples."

            Lily stood in the doorway to the kitchen, which was just inside the front door of the house. Beyond the kitchen she could see a round table with five chairs, followed by a living room with one tattered blue couch, several beanbags, and a TV. Having a dad who inspected foster care programs, the whole set up screamed "group home" to Lily, but if so, where were the adults and the other kids? If everyone else went to church, they wouldn't just leave Jen on her own, would they? Or maybe it was some kind of a transition home, since Jen was a senior, and might be eighteen already. It seemed rude to ask.

            Within minutes, Jen had one batch of bacon blotted in paper towels while another whole panful sizzled. She'd left it all soft enough to wrap in little bundles, and that's what she was doing. One slice went around a fig and a sprig of green, fresh mint from the smell, but where had that come from? Jen deftly wrapped another and pushed a toothpick through each.

            Lily paid more attention as Jen produced two frozen prawns from a "Jen" baggie in the freezer and tossed them into the pan with the second batch of bacon. Then she filled a celery stalk with peanut butter, sliced it in half, and wrapped bacon around each of those. She toasted one frozen waffle, sliced, and wrapped. She microwaved leftover asparagus in white sauce and wrapped bacon like the stripe on a candy cane (with two toothpicks). She made a white bread and jelly sandwich, cut off the crust, sliced it into four little squares, and looped each of those in bacon from the second batch. She also wrapped the prawns, and for the last two slices of bacon, she wrapped two Twinkies and then fried each of those in the panful of fat.

            Lily would have been appalled, but it all looked so tidy. Jen formed a circle of bacon-ized finger foods on each of two trays and gestured Lily over to the table. Napkins and utensils sat in a basket in the middle, and Jen and Lily helped themselves as they sat down to eat.

            "Wow, this is good," Lily said, and Jen smiled and looked as proud as if she'd invented bacon. "Do you eat like this every day?"

            "Only when I feel like it," Jen answered before taking her next bite.

            The meal was incredibly filling and gone incredibly fast.

            "You want more of anything?" Jen asked.

            "No, it was great, but I'm full. Could I get a glass of water?"

            "Sure, first cupboard."

            Jen motioned just behind her, and Lily got up, found a glass, and filled it at the sink.

            "Who's that?" Lily asked. From the window over the sink, she could see an old woman in a flowery dress sitting in a rocker across the driveway.

            "Alma, she lives here."

            "Is she the landlady?"

            "Nah, more like a grandmother."

            Lily decided her guess about a group home or transitional housing must be right, but if Jen didn't want to say so directly, she wasn't going to be rude and ask.

            "Do you know a boy at school named Xavier?" Lily asked.

            Jen shrugged.

            "He has slicked back hair, maybe acts kind of crazy?"

            Jen showed no reaction, just ran a finger through the grease on her plate and licked it.

            "He lives in the house where the creek meets the highway, and he's tried to ask me questions about you."

            "Oh, that boy. He watches me sometimes."

            "What do you think he wants?"

            She shrugged, "Some people like to watch me."

            Lily didn't know what to say to that. So she just said, "I didn't tell him anything."

            There was a silence, and then Jen picked up the plates and started to wash them. Lily brought her glass and said, "Let me do that."

            Jen let her, and brought the pan over. Then Jen just leaned against the counter as Lily washed, rinsed, and filled the drying rack. It seemed fair enough, and Lily had enjoyed the bacon creations, but she still felt uneasy around Jen, like she wasn't sure how this friendship was supposed to work moment to moment.

            "You want to go for a ride now?"

            "On your motorcycle?"

            Jen nodded.

            "Will we be back before noon?"

            "If you want."

            "Sure, I'll just grab the water and stuff from my bike."

            They went outside. Alma, in her rocking chair, smiled and nodded at them as they walked to the back of the house.

 

            Jen drove for an hour to a mostly flat place covered with pretty rocks. It took longer than Lily expected, but somehow, she felt comfortable this time. The vibrations of the bike were familiar. The lack of people, buildings, and trees represented openness now. The light still seemed too bright though.

            When Jen climbed off the bike and just started walking away, Lily felt a little uncertain. Jen was picking up rocks here and there, looking at them, then setting them down, so Lily followed and did the same.

            "You know what this is?" Jen asked.

            "You mean what kind of rock?"

            "No, it's wood. Petrified wood. Really old trees."

            Lily was amazed and embarrassed all at once. She'd been looking at it, seen the rings, even seen the bark-like edges on a few pieces. Of course it was petrified wood. Hadn't she been shown this someplace before, as bookends or something? She just hadn't ever thought of petrified wood lying scattered around a desert like this.

            Then she saw a log at the bottom of a pit. She walked that way until she was right at the edge. Jen came up behind her, then looped around to the least steep side and headed in. Lily followed feeling the hot sand slip and suck into her shoes with every step, but it didn't make an avalanche, or whatever you'd call that sort of thing with sand.

            The petrified log stuck out of the ground at an angle. It shot up past Lily's knees and was over a foot wide. The bark was preserved along one side, and Jen was using a handkerchief (she carried a handkerchief?) to shine up the rest. Where she rubbed, it was beautiful, rings of reddish brown and yellow, separated by bands of black, all of it hard, but also porous, looking more like hardened cork than solid wood.

            "I guess we know why no one's taken this piece," Jen said.

            Lily looked up the side of the pit, and worried about getting herself out. Removing something like this log would be a real pain, even if it was just a log and not a log-sized rock. Besides, the log belonged here, as if all the years it had spent becoming rock had magnetized it, binding it to the sand and the remains of its forest.

            Luckily, Jen didn't try to cllect the log, and while it wasn't easy walking out, it was nowhere near as hard as Lily had expected. The ground seemed to cooperate, to not slide each time until her foot lifted away. She'd never seen sand behave like that before, but then again, she'd never been to a petrified forest. Her feet felt so hot when they reached the top that she checked the soles of her shoes to see if they'd melted, but they weren't even clogged with sand.

            "Guess we should go if you want to be back by noon."

            Lily could have said that she didn't really have to be back by noon, but she stayed silent, kind of looking forward to the motorcycle ride, even though she'd enjoyed this place with its scattered wood rocks. To be on the safe side, she put on touch up sunscreen when they reached the bike. She held it out to Jen, who shook her head.

            "Don't you ever burn?"

            Jen just shrugged.

            "Can I ask you something else?"

            A nod.

            "Should I not talk to you at school?" Jen looked at her as if she didn't understand the question. "When we said 'hi' that once, you left a moment later without saying goodbye, and then these guys seemed annoyed with me, and you never wave or anything otherwise. I just wasn't sure what was going on."

            Jen shrugged again, but something passed across her face that was sorrowful if not actually apologetic. It was gone by the time she spoke, but her full attention seemed to focus on Lily for the first time that day. Lily felt like she was pulled forward, not quite like the pull on the mesa, but almost. Jen said, "For a while, I worked so hard to figure people out, that I forgot who I was. Then, I gave it up. It's not that I'm uninterested. You just shouldn't count on me."

            It was probably the longest speech she'd ever heard Jen give, and it cut like a knife. Jen was her friend. Lily wanted to protect her from Xavier, from anyone who watched her or might take away who she was. But what did it mean to have a friend you couldn't count on? And what sort of things could make Jen forget who she was?

            Jen reached out to her, smoothing her hair and gently untangling a bit before braiding the top and tucking it into Lily's shirt.

            Lily tried to ask, to think what she could say that wouldn't come out wrong. But Jen was still looking at her, looking like she'd said it all, and so Lily lost her chance.

            "You want to try driving? I could ride in back."

            Lily was without words; she just shook her head silently as she climbed on the back of the bike.

 

 

 

 

 

6

 

Alarm

 

            The next day, Lily ate lunch outside. There was a concrete planter, like the ones outside school cafeterias everywhere, but this one didn't display even a pretence of plants. Still, it gave a flat space of concrete on which to sit.

Lily didn't feel like trying to make friends; maybe she hadn't really felt like it since school started. Dora, the preacher's daughter, was the only student who'd ever invited her to a table, and that was just the first day. Lily had limited their conversations to no more than a few sentences ever since. Mostly, Lily tried to be the first to sit somewhere, and sometimes people talked to her, at least a little. She'd lunched beside Marie, Stacey, Mark, and Olivia. Olivia had insisted on giving her a cookie. There were a couple of others who talked to her in class. Dora asked this morning if Lily had chosen a congregation. But no one sought her out. She had no regular place to eat, and today she didn't even feel like trying.

            Jen was also eating outside, but far across the black top at a picnic table full of seniors. There were about as many guys as girls, and while Jen didn't talk as much as some, it was clear that she fit in. She smiled when the other girls did, and the one next to her kept leaning in to tell her things. The guy who had threatened Lily in the hall was sitting across from Jen wearing a football shirt with the number "18" on it. He mostly spoke to a blond girl, but sometimes leaned forward to speak with Jen. When he did, Jen smiled at him and focused in that way that excluded everyone else. She did it when other people spoke to her, too.

            Lily dawdled over lunch, not packing up until the warning bell range. The group of seniors walked past and for once Jen saw her and made a point of saying, "Hi, Lily."

            Lily just nodded and said, "Hi, Jen," torn between not meaning to be noticed and appreciating the public recognition. Then the group passed in through the cafeteria. Lily shoved her lunch trash into the can and headed in for her next class.

            She was only halfway across the cafeteria when that guy, number "18", entered through the door ahead of her. He must have looped back. She wanted to run outside, but that would leave her on the field, even farther from anyone else. There were still a few kids leaving out the other side of the double doors. Lily put her head down and walked as fast as she could without being obvious, trying to catch up with the exiting group. But it was too far and a strong hand grabbed her shoulder, spinning her half around.

            "I know who you are, Lily Thompson. And you and your dad are nothing but busy bodies." He didn't have friends with him this time, and his voice was low and level. Somehow, that was much more frightening. She would have called out, even risking public humiliation, but when she tried, no sound came.

            As the last students disappeared, he continued in that low, scary voice, "I'm Will Moran. My dad's the law in this town, and pretty soon I'm going to be the law, too. If you want to get along here, you can be nice to me, but don't—"

            A rattling alarm cut across Will's words. His hand tightened for a moment, and Lily sucked air and yelped without meaning to. Will didn't seem to care, he looked around with his jaw thrust forward, then gave her one last shake and let go as kids flowed back into the cafeteria and out the back doors to the playing fields.

            A teacher Lily didn't know came through saying, "Fire Alarm. Everybody out and line up with your fourth period classes."

            Will didn't even spare Lily a glance as he headed out, and she eventually did the same. As she searched among the lines on the field for her Algebra class and teacher, Xavier managed to catch her eye and wink. She thought he was being randomly annoying, until she realized that someone might have pulled the fire alarm just to help her. The realization hit her like a splash in the face. It seemed unlikely, but he'd intervened before, and if he was watching Jen, he could have seen how things were setting up. She wondered about it as she stood on the field with no one to talk to, and she kept wondering after the fire marshal came and declared it a false alarm. She wondered until her class got going and she escaped into math and abstraction.

 

            That evening, math was the last homework Lily had to finish. As she wrote equations, she could feel the soreness in her right shoulder where Will had grabbed her. As she put things away she went to the mirror. Sliding her pale green shirt to the side, she could see a bruise forming. She'd had worse from circus, but that wasn't the same. Despite all the moving her family had done, she'd never before been physically bullied.

            She felt dirty, like it was somehow her fault, like she'd done something to attract bad attention. She knew how pathetic that thinking was; she'd heard all the speeches about date rape and girls blaming themselves when they shouldn't. This guy hadn't tried anything like that. The bruise crossed under her bra strap, but that wasn't why she felt violated. It was that someone had touched her, hurt her, and she hadn't done anything. There had been a moment when she couldn't find her voice at all. Had that ever happened to her before?

            Lily needed to talk to someone, and it was going to have to be Jen. No matter how uncertain that friendship was, Jen was the only friend she had, and the situation sort of involved her. Unfortunately, Lily had no way to look up her phone number at the group home or whatever that place was, and cell phones didn't work reliably in Farmington, let alone Nuevo Nuevo. It was strange how teen culture changed when cell reception was much worse than spotty. Rose had held a mock funeral for her phone one evening, but Lily hadn't much minded, until now.

            "Dad, I'm going biking!" she called as she hit the stairs.

            "Is your homework done?" He was at the back door, installing another diamond-shaped window. What was it with all those windows? As she reached the front, she could just see him through the kitchen entryway.

            "Yeah, I'm done. I'll be home before dark."

            She was on her bike before she really had time to think. She'd never met Jen at her home before. Was it rude to just show up? But she didn't have her phone number, and she felt a very strong need to talk tonight.

            To get there, she took the long way around, going well past Xavier's house and his property. It didn't look like anyone was home.

            Finally, she reached Jen's place, just as Jen was putting on her helmet by her motorcycle.

            "Jen, I wanted to talk to you." It came out in a rush as she brought her bike to a skidding stop.

            Jen took off her helmet and gave Lily one of those searching looks, but accompanied by a trace of smile that reached to her eyes. "Okay, you can come along."

            "Uh, where?"

            "To the desert. There's something I want to see tonight, and maybe you should see it too."

            "I told my dad I'd be home by dark."

            "You can call him inside."

            "What should I say?"

            Jen just shrugged.

            "Where's the phone?"

            Jen set her helmet down and started toward the matching house across from where they'd eaten bacon. Its front door opened beside the kitchen just the same, and Lily caught up as Jen was standing in the doorway talking to the old woman from before.

            "Alma, can Lily use the phone?"

            "Of course, dear." The old woman brought a cordless phone to Jen and gazed at Lily through the door.

            Lily nodded as she punched in her number. A heavy set girl with shiny hair and a Minnie Mouse bow stepped into the kitchen, but left without a word when she heard Lily start to speak.

            "Hey, Dad. Can I stay out a little later? My friend, Jen, wants to show me something."

            "Will you be eating there?" he asked.

            Lily felt awkward. She looked up at Jen and Alma, "He wants to know if I'm eating here or when I get home."

            "We'll feed you," Jen said, and she ducked into the kitchen and started talking to Alma.

            "Yes, I guess."

            "I'll need to talk to a parent and get a phone number." Lily felt awkward, but she took the two steps inside needed to reach Alma.

            "My dad was wondering if he could speak to a grown-up and get a phone number."

            "Sure, dear." Alma reached out for the phone, and Jen heard her say, "Hello, this is Alma Kree, and we're happy to feed your daughter dinner." There was a pause, and she gave the phone number and said goodbye.

            Meanwhile, Jen was collecting food from the stove and counter and plopping it into Tupperware at speed. Alma seemed to be cooking for a small army, so what Jen took barely made a difference. The Tupperware and some utensils went into a backpack, which Jen unceremoniously handed to Lily.

            "Food looks great, Alma," Jen said as she started to leave.

            "Wait," the old woman croaked as she shuffled down the hall. Jen rocked on her heels for the minute it took Alma to return carrying an old blanket and motorcycle helmet. She handed them directly to Lily.

            "Thanks," Lily said.

            "You're welcome." Alma nodded once, slowly, a dust speck out of time in the whirlwind of Jen's motion.

            Jen was halfway back to her motorcycle by the time Lily turned around. So Lily quickly pulled on the backpack and helmet, tightening both as she walked. She moved the backpack strap out a little, away from her bruise. The blanket she'd have to tuck between herself and Jen, she presumed it was to sit on, since this seemed to have become a picnic, although Jen hadn't been bringing food before. Lily took her place behind Jen, and they were off. The helmets and noise pretty much prevented conversation, and while Lily started out imagining how she'd ask Jen about Will, she was soon content to just watch the shadows grow as they raced across open space.

 

            Before sunset, they were up high again. Lily didn't think the hill they were on would be called a mesa, since it didn't have one flat top. There were jagged rocks sticking up, blocking the worst of the wind, but she and Jen were on the highest flat level. Certainly the highest point a motorcycle could reach.

            Lily spread the blanket on the ground and set the backpack on it, then joined Jen at the edge where she stood scanning the lowlands. Everything looked reddish in the evening light, with long shadows stretching out beneath them.

            "We should see horses, from that-away. I think they'll pass near here."

            "Why?"

            "A Navajo thing. I brought binoculars." Jen unfolded something from her jacket pocket that looked more like opera glasses. She used them to scan the area, then passed them to Lily. Lily took a turn, but didn't spot any horses.

            They stood for a while, taking turns with the binoculars. Lily didn't know if she should ask more about what they were doing or try to talk about her earlier troubles. Instead she finally asked, "Should we eat?"

            "Sure," Jen said, but she didn't leave the edge.

            Lily pulled the blanket farther forward. Their flat shelf was only about six times the size of the blanket, so there wasn't that far to go. Then she sat down and unpacked the food. They had chicken, mashed potatoes, some kind of squash, and bluish green beans. There were two forks, one spoon, two large water bottles, and no napkins or plates. Lily went ahead and started on a piece of chicken, using her fingers like she would with fried chicken. This had been cooked in some kind of sauce, but it was mostly dry now. It was a little warmer than the air against her fingers.

            Jen eventually came over and stabbed a few beans with a fork, ate them while kneeling at the edge of the blanket, and left her fork in the bean container. Then she took a piece of chicken and went back to watching with her binoculars.

            Lily set her chicken bone on the lid of one container and licked her fingers as clean as she could. Then she took the other fork and tried a few beans and some potatoes, eating right out of the Tupperwares. The food was pretty good for being mostly cold, even the odd looking beans.

            "Got 'em," Jen said.

            Lily went back to the edge, and Jen gave her the binoculars and pointed her in the correct direction. It wasn't hard to spot the dozen or so horses and riders cutting across what seemed to be unmarked land. They were heading straight toward where Jen and Lily stood.

            "Where are they going?"

            "To ask someone to host a gathering."

            "Why?"

            "Because the medicine man told them too."

            "Are we supposed to be watching this?"

            "I need to see their route."

            "Why?"

            Jen shrugged as she watched again through the binoculars. This didn't seem like the right time to ask about Will, but Lily wasn't sure there was going to be a right time.

            "You know, after lunch at school, one of the guys you were hanging out with came back and sort of threatened me."

            "I'm not responsible for what he does," Jen said, not lowering the binoculars from her face.

            "Do you know who I'm talking about?"

            "No, but I'm not responsible for anyone but myself." Her hands didn't tense or her voice change pitch as she said it.

            "It was a guy named Will, and he left a nasty bruise on my shoulder."

            That got Jen to remove the binoculars and look at her. Lily pulled her clothing off her right shoulder. The bruise had darkened, or maybe it was just the evening light.

            "He shouldn't have done that," Jen said. She traced a finger around the edge of the bruise then laid the back of her hand on Lily's cheek for a moment. Lily's face and shoulder seemed to burn with the attention, but then Jen was looking through the binoculars again.

            Lily shifted her shirts and bra strap back. The bruise didn't hurt at her touch the way it had before, and she wondered if part of the pain had been in her head, and she'd just needed to tell someone. Still, Jen could have showed a little more concern.

            "He bothered me the other time I spoke to you also. Do you have any idea why?"

            "Sometimes people act strange."

            Lily imagined she'd heard the words "around me" at the end of the sentence, but Jen didn't actually say them. Most of Jen's attention still seemed channeled through the binoculars.

            "Do you think he's dangerous?"

            "In what way?"

            "Would he have hurt me more if he had the chance?"

            "Could be. Perhaps you should avoid him."

            Lily was getting mad. Was this what Jen meant when she said not to count on her? Because this seemed pretty harsh. But maybe Jen just didn't understand.

            "Do you think maybe he's obsessed with you or something and is taking it out on me? Or maybe he thinks I'm bothering you and should be made to go away?"

            "You're not bothering me."

            There was silence again as Jen watched, and Lily wondered if there was any point in continuing. Was this just how Jen dealt with things? No worries? No responsibility? And did she like spending time with Lily or was she just not bothered?

            "Look, they're curving around that rise and heading toward the intended hosts home," Jen said.

            The horses had come to a point right below the hill they stood on, then turned to the left with a slight curve around a small mound of rocks and sand. Lily looked through the binoculars, not really caring, until she realized she recognized one of the riders.

            "That's Xavier, the boy I told you about who got in my way when I was riding home and asked me questions. I thought he might have been spying on you." Lily realized as she said it that Jen was now spying on him, but it didn't seem as creepy in reverse

            "Which one?"

            "The skinny one, in the gray and blue flannel."

            Jen took the binoculars back. "Yeah, I've seen him at school."

            "I think he might have been watching today, too. When Will was harassing me, it was cut short by that fire alarm. Then out on the field Xavier winked at me, and I had this idea that he might have pulled the alarm to help me."

            "And now he gets to ride with the Navajo. Maybe we should talk to him."

            "Tonight?"

            "No telling when he'll get home. Tomorrow, after school. You can show me where he lives."

            Lily thought about refusing. Jen wasn't acting much like a friend, and yet she assumed Lily would help her find Xavier. A few vindictive remarks crossed her mind, but soon she realized she didn't want to start an argument. For some reason, it was hard to stay mad at Jen. "Where will I meet you?"

            "At my bike, beside the school."

            That would be weird, but of course, much better than riding the bus, and it sounded like Jen really did want her around. Besides, Xavier might be dangerous in his own way, and Lily didn't think Jen should seek him out alone. That reminded Lily about Will. But he'd be at football practice after school.

            Jen seemed absorbed in what she was watching again, so Lily went back to eat. After a while she asked, "Do you want any more food?"

            By then it was getting dark fast, though the sunset wasn't much to see. It was just a brightness she couldn't look at sinking below a mostly flat ridge without any fancy clouds or anything. Evidently, this wasn't the time and place to watch the sunset.

            Jen held her ground at the edge of the cliff anyway.

            Lily packed the leftovers into the backpack. By then it was nearly dark and very chilly. After two weeks in New Mexico, Lily should have expected the cold. She was wearing a long sleeved blouse over a tee shirt, but she would have brought a jacket if she'd planned to be out this late. Instead, she shook the picnic blanket a bit, folded it in half with the dirty sides in, and wrapped it around her shoulders.

            She went to stand by Jen who handed her the binoculars.

            "They're almost there," she said.

            Lily could see the horses closing in on a ring of houses by a corral with more horses. It was the only area with outdoor lights for quite a distance.

            "We can go now, if you're cold."

            Lily was somewhat surprised Jen even considered her comfort that much, but then, Jen had been very thoughtful when she cooked for them the previous day. Maybe they just had different ideas about friendship.

            "Don't you want to see what they do?" Lily asked.

            "No, just how they got there. Let me wrap you for the ride home."

            Jen took the blanket, folded it again the long way, so it was shorter, and then wrapped it around Lily as if it were a cocoon. It went under her arms, so that part would still be cold, but it also let Jen tighten the pack over the blanket, which would help secure everything as they rode. The whole process was very caring and comforting in its way, like being small again and having someone tuck her in at night.

            Then Lily managed to get her bundled self onto the bike. They wound down the hill in the nearly complete darkness and made their way to the road that led back home.

            Lily was frozen despite the blanket when they crossed the new bridge to where the spiral streets met this long, straight highway.

            "Which way to your house?" Jen asked as she stopped.

            "My bike's at your place."

            "You can get it after we talk to Xavier tomorrow."

            "I can walk from here."

            As Lily climbed off and removed the pack, helmet, and blanket, Jen stared at her in that scrutinizing way she had. It was almost as if her eyes glowed.

            "You don't want me to know where you live?"

            "No! I don't want my parents to know about the motorcycle."

            Jen nodded, but seemed unsure why it would matter. She slipped the pack onto her own back, shoved the blanket in between it and her jacket, and buckled the helmet to her side.

            "Thanks," Lily said.

            "See you tomorrow." And with that, she left.

           

            Lily kept to herself most of the next day. Even more than before, she didn't feel like chatting. She ate her lunch in the cafeteria but maintained enough personal space that others could easily ignore her. There were times when she would have worried that she looked like some shy, lonely loser girl, but today she didn't want any attention. After school she dragged out the last few minutes by her locker, giving any football players time to get to practice, before she headed out to find Jen.

            Jen was waiting by her bike in the lot beside the school. The spare helmet from the night before was waiting on the bike seat. Lily only felt like nodding as she approached, and so Jen nodded back. They left without a word.

            Halfway along the highway between Farmington and Nuevo Nuevo, Lily spotted Xavier on his bicycle. It took her a moment to trust her identification, just seeing him from behind with a bike helmet, noticing the way he slouched toward his handlebars and the shape of his skinny but muscular arms. Probably no one else would bike that far in the desert. She tapped Jen and shouted over the engine noise, "That's him!"

            Jen swooped her motorcycle sideways onto the shoulder. They were at least a hundred yards in front of Xavier, but otherwise, it was much like the way Xavier had blocked the trail by his house the day he first spoke to Lily. Maybe it was just a New Mexico thing.

            Xavier biked right up to them, and stopped still straddling his bike. Jen pulled off her helmet and Lily did the same as Jen said, "You're Xavier?"

            "And you're Jen."

            "I heard you wanted to know something about me."

            "That's true."

            "And I saw you riding with the medicine man last night. Why?"

            "Answers for answers?" Xavier asked.

            "No," said Jen.

            Lily had often felt out-of-place after a move, but this conversation was stranger than any she remembered. What was going on between Xavier and Jen? Could people really be this different away from the West Coast? Xavier raised his eyebrows as if it all made perfect sense and Lily was the one who didn't get it. Until that point, Xavier and Jen had seemed caught up in each other, as if Lily didn't even exist. They all sat on their bikes, and there was apprehension, like the static charge in laundry, attached to their exchange. Xavier waited, glancing between the two girls, as the silence stretched.

            Finally, Jen said, "We want to go with you to the final night of the ritual that started yesterday, and if you take us, Lily will answer truthfully whatever she knows about me."

            "What?" Lily asked.

            "Okay, but I want some of my answers now," Xavier said.

            Jen nodded and looked back at Lily as Xavier asked, "What did you find in the wash the day we met up on our bikes?"

            Lily saw he was addressing her. She felt the intensity of Jen's gaze, as if willing her to answer, and for the first time she knew she was useful to Jen. After being dragged along so much, she finally felt necessary, but she didn't want to be. And how had she become a bargaining chip between them?

Still, she knew what day Xavier meant right off, and she could feel the warmth of Jen's gaze urging her to answer. Once she decided to go along, it took her just a moment to place the word "wash" as meaning the dry creek bed they'd hiked in.

            "We found pictures on a couple of rocks." Lily looked to Jen for direction, but Jen stayed silent, listening.

            "You want to tease for every word? I'll find it more entertaining than you will." He smiled in a way that didn't look like a boy taunting, but more like the tight smirk of a disagreeable teacher. It was worse than the day they met. "Pray tell, what were the pictures of?"

            With that, and an accompanying wide grin from Jen, Lily decided, once again, that she'd fallen in with crazy people. "The first was just some guy, called Kokopelli, with a flute," she wouldn't mention the other part, "and a bunch of squiggles. The second showed Kokopelli again, surrounded by spirals, and between two of the spirals was a little person with a very big head."

            "Any idea what it meant?"

            Lily shook her head.

            "Did Jen offer any ideas?" Xavier spoke slowly, as if giving her a translation.

            Lily didn't want to answer, but something in the way they both looked at her made her sure she'd strangle if she tried to lie. "She said the first might be some fertility thing and maybe Kokopelli was you know," she looked down but knew they were waiting, "Jacking off or something."

            Lily's face felt hot, and she figured she was blushing, but she tried to look around as if it wasn't that big of a deal to say this in front of a guy she barely knew.

            "Enough for now?" Jen asked.

            "One more thing." He looked at Lily again, this time more like he was asking a normal question. "Do you know anything about Jen's parents or childhood?"

            "No," Lily answered, easily and truthfully.

            "Pity. Perhaps you should have been more curious." He spoke now exactly as he had when they'd first met, which should have been annoying, but under the circumstances seemed an improvement.

            "Where and when do we meet you?" Jen asked.

            "Saturday, mid-afternoon at my house will do."

            "What do I tell my parents?" Lily asked, not sure if she was asking herself or Jen, but it was Xavier who answered.

            "Tell your father the Parell family has invited you to witness a Native American ritual. He'll let you go. We'll pick you up."

            Lily wanted to ask how Xavier knew this, but Jen was putting on her helmet, and Xavier looked set to bike away. She figured it was easier to ask her dad. The name Parell did sound kind of familiar, but she couldn't place it after that strange conversation.

            Jen drove to her place, where Lily swapped for her bicycle and then biked home.

            Her dad was at the dining table with three manila folders open before him when she arrived. Lily grabbed herself a snack, yogurt and granola, and then sat down across from him.

            "Hi, Lily. How was school?"

            "Same old. What would you say if I wanted to go see a Native American ritual with the Parell family?"

            Her dad looked up, as if she'd caught his interest, "Today?"

            "Saturday, starting mid-afternoon."

            "I guess that would be okay. How'd this come about?"

            Lily was caught between annoyance and amazement that Xavier's words worked. "Xavier Parell goes to my school. My friend, Jen, asked him about this thing, and he ended up inviting us both."

            "That's nice. Are you supposed to bring anything?"

            "Don't think so."

            "Hmm. I can check with his dad."

            "How do you know his dad?"

            "He's the guy who built this housing development, and also a bit of a local scholar. I've been talking to him about a project I'm doing for work."

            Now Lily knew where she'd heard the name. Xavier's dad was the purportedly crazy architect, but how did that connect to her father? "What project?"

            "Just looking into some missing records."

            "What records?"

            Her dad paused as if assessing her need to know. "There was an orphanage that burned down near here a while back, and there've been irregularities in the paperwork. Mr. Parell has done a lot of research on people who settled here as well as the Native Americans, so he's helped me with a few things. I'm sure you'll have a very interesting evening."

            Lily was sure she would, but not because of Mr. Parell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7

 

The Ritual

 

            After breakfast on Saturday, Rose and Mom left to run errands. Lily's father told her to be ready _whenever_ the Parells came by. She asked if he had a time in mind.

            "Come dry the dishes," he said, and Lily knew she was in for a "talk." The counter was stacked high with the remains of blueberry pancakes, syrupy plates, and a greasy sausage pan.

            She picked up a dish towel, and Dad said, "People from different backgrounds may handle time a little differently. In some cultures it's important to be prompt; in others people will feel rushed and unprepared if you're too close to on time for things."

            "Got it, dad. How about a rough idea of when?"

            He handed her a plate to dry and continued as if she hadn't interrupted. "I haven't got a good handle on the Navajo culture out here, and I wouldn't want to oversimplify. But this ritual you're going to, it may not have a set time. Events may happen when the people involved all get there, and those people, like the Parells, may have ways of gauging those expectations that you and I don't know."

            "The Parells aren't Navajo, are they?"

            "Partly, they are. I don't know their lineage, but they have strong ties to that community. It's part of what makes Evan a useful contact."

            "Okay, so I wait around ready all afternoon until they come for me."

            Her dad nodded as he passed another plate. "And don't point at anyone. It's considered rude. Navajo motion with their chins or lips instead."

            Lily gave her dad a lecture-ending look but tried to make a mental note not to point.

 

            It was close to four when the Parells arrived in their pick-up truck. Lily wore long pants with a fancy gray blouse and boots, at her dad's suggestion. Mr. Parell came up to the front door where her dad introduced them and exchanged pleasantries. He didn't say anything crazy, just shook hands like any other dad. Xavier and Jen were standing by the truck, Xavier by the open door and Jen a little ways down along the truck bed. Lily hurried out.

            Xavier smiled and used an elaborate hand flourish to indicate the small back seat. Since the passenger seat was already folded down, she climbed past it and in. Jen followed without a word, and Xavier popped his seat back up and got in front. By then his dad was back and starting the motor. They headed out across the new bridge, past the Parell's house, and down the highway to an unmarked dirt road.

            Jen was staring out her window, as if she wanted to memorize every stone, but Lily didn't bother. She was wondering why she was with these people in this truck just as Mr. Parell began to explain.

            "You girls ought to know, tonight is the end of a sort of cleansing or healing ritual. Xavier and I will ride in with Mona, the primary patient. There are also six others now. You'll want to stay out of the way for that first part, but come find us when people move to dinner and dancing. You'll see seven structures have been built, one for each patient, and Mona's is at the end nearest the horses. Beforehand, my friend Joe's going to drive the truck out. So he'll get you there and introduced."

            Jen nodded, even though no one was looking at her, and realized she was a bit disappointed by how ordinary and sane Mr. Parell sounded. She tried to console herself with the fact that at least she wasn't worried they'd get lost. During his speech, they'd made a couple turns onto dirt tracks that seemed something between roads and driveways, and now they pulled up by a trailer where horses were being saddled. Everyone got out of the truck.

            There was a lot of milling around but rather little talking. Finally, the Parells took off with a large group on horses, and Lily and Jen climbed back in the truck with Joe. This time Jen sat up front and Lily was alone in the back. Jen seemed to be observing everything except Lily, and Lily tried to pay attention, as well. She thought she knew when they took off on different dirt roads than they'd followed on their way out to the horses, but by the end, she doubted she could find her way to where they'd finished.

            It was as if a couple hundred people had chosen a random patch of desert to build a temporary campground. One side seemed to be the designated parking lot. Dozens of cars formed haphazard rows, but Lily couldn't tell if there'd been a road leading in, or just the tracks created by all the other cars.

            The front row of the parking area formed a semi-circle centered on the makings for a huge bonfire. The parking lot and much of the fire circle was dusty with use, but most of the land around was hard packed desert. A row of temporary stalls, made of lumber that had clearly been used before, bordered the other side. Each stall was perhaps fifteen feet wide, but at least twice as deep, and they contained such commonplace items as folding chairs, tables, and Styrofoam coolers. There were seven stalls, and Lily looked beyond the farthest one to where a temporary corral had been made for the horses, which had not yet arrived.

            Joe parked three rows back in one of the unmarked, curved rows, and left the truck without a word to either of them. Lily's stomach clenched as she wondered if they'd offended him, but he'd already disappeared into the crowd of people milling around. It was embarrassing, but Lily wasn't sure she'd be able to recognize him again. While she hadn't thought she could identify someone as "Navajo" before, many of the people here looked almost identical, like very close relatives. Several men might be Joe or his brothers.

            Jen took her hand and said, "Seen enough?"

            "What? It hasn't even started."

            "Has, but we won't be wanted until dinnertime, and I need to climb up there first."

            Jen pointed with her chin. Lily had never noticed her doing that before. She thought she might have seen it somewhere else, but it looked completely natural for Jen, and not as if she'd had it explained to her by some well-meaning adult. The rise she pointed to looked like a moraine left by a glacier in some National Park, except this wasn't a glacier valley or a National Park as far as Lily knew. The rise was also the only high ground vaguely within walking distance, and Lily guessed that Jen wanted to site for location markers.

            Jen still held her hand, and Lily let herself be led, the touch strangely cool and calming in the heat of afternoon and uncertainty.

            It would have been a quick jaunt if Jen had brought her motorcycle, instead, it took over half an hour to hike to and then up the rocky mound. Lily let her misgivings fall behind and entertained herself by spotting lizards soaking in the last of the afternoon sun. She counted twenty-two, one with a split tail.

            At the top of the rise, Jen looked in each direction as if spotting for landmarks, maybe even figuring directions based on the lowering sun. She looked much as Lily remembered her from that first morning on the bridge, a figure in black with the sun behind her.

            "How do you memorize where things are?" Lily asked, but Jen just shrugged and shock her head. Lily noted for herself that if the sun was setting in the West, their chosen vantage was southeast of the ceremony site. She could see a rock out-cropping almost due west that might be the one they'd eaten chicken on Monday night, but she had no clue how to estimate distances here. Everything seemed far and flat. Those rocks, whether or not they were where she'd been, could be a mile away or twenty. Maybe if she knew how high they were or what the usual visibility was in the desert-- but she didn't.

            "Is that where we were Monday?"

            Jen gave no sign she heard, even though they stood within arm's reach.

            "Can you tell me how far away it is?"

            Silence as Jen turned around in place, staring out.

            "Did you just want to locate this place? You could have followed the trucks or their tracks." While the place they'd come didn't sit on any marked road, the dozens of trucks and old cars parked nearby had worn a clear track by now.

            "The horses are in," Jen said, and sure enough, people were already swinging off and taking care of their mounts back at the corral. Jen started to walk away.

            "Stop!" Lily hadn't meant to shout, but her voice sounded too loud in the emptiness. Jen didn't hesitate or look back.

            Lily ran the short distance to place herself in front of Jen. She tried to keep her voice even, "Just answer me. Look at me."

            Jen looked at her. It was that same appraising scrutiny that no one else could do. Lily shivered with her anger or with embarrassment for her outburst, but didn't for a moment mind being looked at that way. Even if she didn't understand Jen's silence, she felt included, like she belonged right here in the desert with Jen. She'd been happy enough to leave camp after Joe abandoned them at the truck, but with Jen beside her, Lily felt fine walking back toward camp. She didn't even need Jen's hand to feel connected, just the sense that things were settled between the two of them. They walked silently together, watching events unfold.

           By the time everyone on horseback had dismounted, a drumbeat started up. Lily, who had thought she knew nothing about Native Americans, suddenly thought the drumming was clichéd, but had she ever heard it before, even in a movie? All she could remember was PETER PAN, with the lost boys dancing around a fire.

Soon she was walking to the drumbeat. She wanted to be closer and was worried they'd miss whatever there was to see. The groups who'd ridden in were converging with those already there, and all of them were centered around the drums by the unlit fire.

            "Shouldn't we hurry?"

            "We don't belong."

            "Mr. Parell said we could watch."

            "You know I made Xavier invite us."

It hung in the air between them, but Lily didn't care anymore. "He or his dad would have said no if it was a problem, and all you promised was that I'd answer some questions."

            "Yes, that's all." Lily sensed there was more to the words than she understood right now, but she was too intrigued by the Navajo ceremony to care. A strong voice was singing or speaking over the drums. The words were unintelligible, but there was something important in how they were said.

Jen was much slower walking back than she had been on the way out, and her head twitched away to the side now and then. Lily stayed beside her. What had Mr. Parell told them? This was some sort of cleansing ceremony?

            By the time they reached the fire circle, different groups of men were chanting from different positions, but no one had lit the fire, so Lily didn't feel she'd missed too much. An older man with a string tie sometimes chanted alone, and Lily wondered if he was the medicine man or whatever. All of the words were in some other language, presumably Navajo.

            She only identified the seven "patients" when they were escorted back to their "rooms" by what mostly looked like family. Several of the men who looked like Joe accompanied a patient in the middle. The ceremony appeared to be finished, and Lily had no clue what it had really been about. She stood by Jen as other people sorted themselves out, and Jen was still breathing hard from their hike. Lily couldn't remember seeing her out of breath before.

            A lot of people seemed to casually wait for a chance to visit with one or more of the seven families. Some others were unpacking food from the backs of cars or buying food from a barbeque on the far side of the fire circle that had a hand drawn poster with prices. Lily was getting hungry, but it didn't appear to be dinnertime for any of the people who'd been part of the ceremony. So she stood with Jen on the parking lot side of the fire circle wondering if anyone minded them being there. Other than a few nods in passing, no one spoke to them. From what Lily saw, the Navajo were a fairly quiet people.

            She was drawing in the dust with the toe of her boot when Xavier came over to get them.

            "It's about time for dinner, why don't you come join us." Lily smiled and heard her stomach rumble, but Jen just followed without expression.

            Xavier took them into the shelter at the far end, and Lily suddenly felt anxiety like a kid going to a grown up party. Xavier introduced them to the "patient" Mona (who was middle aged and sat very still), her father, her mother, her older brother, her older brother's wife, her younger sister, and her younger sister's husband. There were four kids called in to wash and help, but Lily wasn't sure which parents each belonged to. Only the oldest, a girl of nine or ten, stayed clean or did much to help, but soon everyone was seated at chairs, mostly around a table. The Parells, Jen, and Lily were the only ones present who weren't immediate family.

            Dinner turned out to be cold hot dogs that looked unusually red, cantaloupe, chips, and store brand soda. Jen ate very little. Lily ate what she was given and some of Jen's, so they wouldn't offend their hosts. Not much conversation was required, other than answering a few polite questions about how they knew the Parells.

Everyone was urged to eat more and more until a drum started up, and the oldest woman and the oldest child started packing leftovers into the cooler. Lily tried to clean up her own paper plate and was shoed away by Mona's sister. The clean up took quite a while, with a couple of younger children being told to wash numerous times, but Lily hung back, afraid to even offer her help again. At one point, she noticed the older brother pointing something out to a child. He used his finger just the way she'd been told Navajo didn't, and Lily wondered if the culture was changing or if the rules were more complicated than her father knew.

            Finally, they went and leaned on cars and watched people build up the recently lit fire. Then a few women and young girls, mostly in colorful skirts that might be somewhat traditional dress, started dragging men out to dance. It took a while, but the married women in their group eventually dragged their spouses in. Mona took Xavier's dad, and the oldest child shyly took Xavier by the hand. That left Lily and Jen alone with the little kids, who watched or played in the dirt.

            Lily watched Xavier dance, and thought he looked much less like a geek, even though he was dancing with a child. His father seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself, though he patted Mona on the shoulder like a young niece and not like a grown woman. Lily noticed there weren't many teenagers present, maybe two other girls, both of whom could still be in junior high. Maybe Navajo families couldn't get their older teens to come to stuff like this.

            When Xavier finished dancing, he gave money to the girl, and she went off to ask her grandfather to dance. Xavier made his way back to Lily and Jen to ask, "Do either of you want to dance, or shall we take a walk?"

            "Let's walk," said Lily, feeling out of place again. Jen nodded and quickly led them away. They ended up over by the horses. It smelled, but gave them something to look at other than each other.

            "Can you explain any of that?" Lily asked Xavier.

            "Squaw dance, though maybe you shouldn't call it that. Aren't I supposed to ask the questions?"

            "Why?" Lily asked, "You're the one who knows what's going on."

            "Sure, now I've met her terms you get curious," but Xavier seemed happier than she'd seen him before. His face was still flushed from dancing, and after a moment he explained. "Mona's life wasn't going well. Her mother said she was unhappy, had headaches, and wasn't close to getting married. The healer said it was exposure to Anasazi and eventually found six other people who needed cleansing."

            "I thought Anasazi were the Ancestral Puebloans?" Lily said, surprised that she remembered and that remembering might be useful.

            "They're anyone who's not Dine, which means 'the people,' or what you'd call Navajo."

            "So they're saying we made these people sick?"

            Xavier smiled and nodded.

            "Then wouldn't they want us to keep away from their ceremony?"

            "None of us can avoid exposure to each other. People just need a way to cleanse themselves of whatever causes them pain. But who's to say who's 'us' or 'them.'"

            Lily got the feeling that Xavier had explained things just so he could say the last bit. He looked smug, and Lily thought it made him geeky again. Jen was staring at the horses without any sign that she was listening, and Lily felt her mind flip sideways, like she was still missing something.

            "Done questioning, oh curious one?" he asked, and he was clearly leaving her a chance to ask more.

            "For now. It seems to give you entirely too much satisfaction."

            "All to get my turn. Remember, Jen promised you'd tell me the truth about her, as far as you know it."

            "Makes me glad of how little I know."

            "Why?" His left eyebrow curved down unrelated to the other, and Lily wondered if that came naturally to him.

            "That's not something I have to tell you."

            "You actually like being caught in our bargain?"

            "Same answer," though his asking made her realize again that she did mind, and it was Jen who had proposed the arrangement. Jen, she noticed, had wandered a ways down the fence, not out of earshot, but out of easy conversation range. Lily found she felt both better and worse for the distance.

            "If that's how you want it," Xavier's face lost some of its expressiveness, and he stared at his hand on the corral fence. "What do you know about where Jen lived before she came here?"

            "Nothing."

            He looked at her and then at Jen, halfway around the horse corral. Jen smiled and raised both eyebrows. Xavier sighed.

            "What is the most inexplicable thing you've noticed about Jen?"

            Now it was Lily's turn to look toward Jen for confirmation. Was that a fair question in whatever game they were playing? Jen shrugged and nodded, so Lily figured she had to answer.

            "Not sun burning."

            Jen's mouth dropped open so far it caught Lily's eye from across the distance.

            Xavier chuckled and said, "How stupid of me. You may ask far too few questions, but I bet she chose you for your observations!" He beamed at Lily like an overly-proud parent. "What else have you noticed?"

            Jen was back around and in talking distance before Lily could answer. She held up a hand and said calmly, "Not fair. If she's bound to tell the truth, there have to be some limits on the questions."

            "Fair? You wager her into this and call my part unfair."

            "I do."

            There was a tensing in Xavier's back, which was mostly to Lily at this point, but his answer was calm, "In kindness to Lily, I'll be more specific. Do you remember other ways in which Jen's abilities or needs seemed unusual?"

            "She doesn't seem to need water as often as I do, and she doesn't seem as concerned about food, though she's eaten with me twice before. You were both equally weird when you made this deal about me answering questions in exchange for an invitation. Come to think of it, I don't know if Xavier needs sunscreen, though with his skin it wouldn't seem as strange not to. Heck, for all I know, you're both part of some joke on the clueless, easy to manipulate new girl."

            Jen shook her head, but Xavier just stared at her.

            "Whatever," Lily said, wishing she hadn't talked so freely. What had she been thinking? And whatever had possessed her to say it? Her head was starting to spin, and she felt caught between the two of them.

            "So it goes, I'm sorry if this makes you uneasy," Xavier said. "I think I've just one more worth asking. What places besides here and the wash have you visited with Jen?"

            Lily gave her accounting of each and concluded, "There, I'm done having to answer questions?"

            "Yes," Xavier said.

            "For all the good it did you," Jen said smiling.

            "Perhaps more than you'd guess." Xavier walked away, back toward the dance.

            "He's bluffing," Jen said, but Lily wasn't so sure. Perhaps Xavier hadn't learned as much about Jen's past as he'd hoped, but he'd seemed to recognize the places Lily described and to attach some meaning to them.

            "What does he want?"

            "Ask him," Jen said. "He seems to like you."

            "I don't want anything to do with him, and aren't you worried about why he asked all that?"

            "No, it clears my head, and I really think he likes you. He might tell you things."

            "Nothing I'd want to know."

            "Are you sure? I was thinking we might invite him to Chaco with us."

            "Chaco?"

            "It's the pinnacle of local culture and only a couple of hours drive from here."

            "A couple hours? When were you planning to go?"

            "Next weekend? We might need to stay overnight, or else dawn to dusk."

            "My parents won't like it."

            "So ask Xavier. He knew what to say this time."

            "He might follow us."

            "I said to invite him along."

            Lily didn't like the tone, but she didn't feel up to arguing. "You like him?"

            "Not exactly, but you should probably keep asking him questions."

            "Why shouldn't I ask you?"

            "If I answered that, there wouldn't be any reason," and Jen walked back toward the dance as well.

            Lily stood alone by the smelly horses, about equally annoyed with both Jen and Xavier. When she remained still, a bay came near, and she carefully reached out to touch his neck. The fur wasn't soft. Lily tried to remember the last time she'd touched a horse, but it was five years ago at least, on some vacation trail ride, and she couldn't remember the feel of it. She stroked the horse and wondered what was going on behind her. Xavier was wrong to say she wasn't curious. She'd wanted to understand what went on here tonight. She wanted to know about Chaco, whatever that was, even if it meant she'd have to talk to Xavier. Maybe she even wanted to talk to Xavier.

            By the time Lily returned to the dancing, Jen was in the center of things with a Navajo man whose long hair hung down his back in a ponytail. Lily looked around and counted quite a few men with long hair like that. However, Jen was the only female with short hair. All of the women wore their hair at least somewhat long. One had a braid that hung to the small of her back then looped all the way back up to tie at the base of the braid. If worn down it would have reached past her knees. Lily thought it was funny to see Jen with her short hair choosing a man with a ponytail, but everyone pretended not to see. They all carefully looked away from Jen with her short curls and her very light skin. The smoke seemed to screen the unusual couple as well, though neither Jen nor the man was coughing.

            Then Lily saw Xavier. Xavier watched Jen as if trying to predict her next move. He watched from the fringes, leaning against a car, so Lily walked over.

            "You're just going to watch, not dance?"            

            "Did you want to dance?" he asked without looking her way.

            "No, just wondering why Jen chose that guy."

            "He asked her, if it makes any difference, but I think she did sort of choose."

            "They say opposites attract."

            "What makes you think they're opposites? I bet they could have both been voted most likely to dance with someone unusual. Besides, people can know a lot about each other without knowing that they know it."

            "Or maybe with the ceremony over, he's already falling under the influence of a new Anasazi," Lily said, with a kick at the ground.

            "Hush, better to say that later."

            He sounded far too serious, and that annoyed Lily more. They stood in silence for a while, but that was boring.

            "So tell me about the Ancestral Puebloans."

            "What about them?"

            "Why'd they paint rocks?"

            "No canvas."

            "Or paper. What about hides?"

            "It wouldn't have lasted this long. Besides, they couldn't have made petroglyphs on paper or hides. They have to be carved."

            "So how do people know their names, like Kokopelli?"

            For the first time since she'd returned to the dance, he glanced at her, but only for a moment. He answered while watching Jen. "Well, a lot of people think the Hopi are partial descendents from the Anasazi, and they have very old legends about Kokopelli. They say that upon their entrance into this, the fourth world, the Hopi people were met by an Eagle who shot an arrow into the two "mahus," insects who carried the power of heat. The "mahus" immediately began playing such uplifting melodies on their flutes that they healed their own pierced bodies. The Hopi then began their separate migrations and each "mahu" would scatter seeds of fruits and vegetables onto the barren land. Over them, each played his flute to bring warmth and make the seeds grow. His name—"Koko" for wood and "Pilau" for hump (which was the bag of seeds he always carried)—was given to him on this long journey. It is said that he draws that heat from the center of the Earth. So Kokopelli started as one of the powerful mahu who brought them here, and now the Hopi see him as a god of fertility, for plants, animals, and people, but we can only guess what the Anasazi thought."

            Lily wanted to say something about the strange heat she kept feeling and how Jen acted tonight, but she couldn't get the words out. "Are there Hopi around here too?"

            "Not right here. The Navajo got this land. My dad has Hopi friends in Arizona who invite us to some of their rituals and dances."

            "Are they very different?"

            Xavier kept his eyes fixed on Jen who danced closer to the fire than anyone else and seemed to stay on the smoky side. "My dad says the Hopi and Navajo see things mostly the same, but show them differently. The Hopi rituals we go to at the start of summer involve a lot of masks and loin cloths with symbols for each man's family affiliation. It's all very traditional, except they wear shorts under the loin cloths now. The older dancers guide the newer ones. I think they kind of press the guys my age into doing it. It's probably good for teaching their culture, but I wouldn't want to dance around with a clay pot on my head."

            "What?"

            "Mudheads, lots of the dancers are mudheads with clay pots on their heads. Then there's the hummingbirds, which look really cool, but they have such long beaks, it's probably even harder to dance in those. And they dance over and over again, facing in each direction for each dance, all during the day when it's hot. The spectators get to sit on the roofs and eat shaved ice and pickles. At the end, the dancers throw food up to the roofs and everyone scrambles for it."

            Lily was trying to make sense of it all and wondering how she could ask about Chaco, when Xavier's head bobbed in a sort of nod, and he started walking away, around the circle. Lily was startled, but looked over where Jen had been dancing. She was now outside the circle with Mr. Parell. The long-haired man she'd danced with was facing a new partner, but he kept glancing over his shoulder at Jen.

            Jen and Mr. Parell appeared to be saying goodbye to their hosts, and Lily started around the way Xavier had gone. When she reached the others, she heard Mr. Parell saying, "Give my best to Mona and tell her we're sorry about leaving so soon." Mona's mother only nodded with her mouth pulled tight, and Lily muttered quick thanks as the rest turned back toward the car.

            "What happened?" she whispered to Jen's back.

            "Nothing," Jen said, and not another word was spoken for the entire ride home. Lily sat stiffly as the truck bounced along, immersed in the smell of campfire smoke that clung to Jen's clothing and wondering what might have happened to make them all leave early.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8

 

Chaco

 

            Monday at lunch she looked for Xavier. It wouldn't do her reputation any good to be seen with him- or maybe it would, but not in a way she'd like. Somehow, that didn't matter to her as much as it had before.

            Once she'd confirmed that Jen was outside with Will and that group again, Lily figured she could just look around and spot Xavier. If he was really spying on Jen, he'd have to be in line of sight, right?

            But he wasn't. She scouted every edge of the field, catching displeased glances from some stoners and a couple flirting by the fence. Maybe after their bargain, and the mediocre answers to a few questions, he'd lost interest. Naturally it would happen now that Jen thought he was useful and Lily was supposed to talk to him.

            After a couple more minutes, Lily decided she was too conspicuous and didn't want to cause more trouble with Will. If she sat just around the corner of a building, she could peek out now and then to see if Xavier showed up.

            Around the first corner there were no benches, just a cement walkway with a permanent layer of dust. Lily decided to try again.

            Around the next building's corner she found what she needed. Several doors down, there were two picnic tables and a familiar figure. Evidently, this was where Xavier ate lunch. He gestured her over, as if he'd been expecting her, and that's when she noticed the fish-eye mirror. It was about a foot in diameter and seemed to be permanently mounted on the next building along. From Xavier's picnic table, it would give a fairly good view of the entire field area.

            "Did you put that up?"

            "No," Xavier shook his head dismissively.

            "Who did?"

            "Wouldn't know."

            "Can I sit here?"

            "I'd be delighted, I'm sure."

            Lily sat and set out her lunch, tuna salad sandwich, cut in triangles, dried apricots, pretzels, and water. She used the water bottle to keep the napkin and lunch bag from blowing away. She ate the first half of her sandwich in silence, trying to figure out where to begin.

            "Did you sit here last year?"

            "No, some teachers hadn't given it up yet."

            "Oh."

            He looked at her in a way that forced her to meet his eyes. "The next logical question is?"

            "Isn't one of us supposed to name conditions first?"

            "What?" Xavier's expression was as blank as any high school boy's for a moment, then it split into a frog-faced grin. "Oh no, I may be obnoxious, but not that way. You'll remember, I tried to ask about Jen in a friendly way to begin with."

            Remembering his first bicycle road block with its threats about private property she almost barked, "That was supposed to be friendly?"

            In that moment, he looked away, and she regretted saying it. "If you're saying I lack social graces, observe my usual company." He gestured at the otherwise empty lunch tables.

            She stifled a "sorry" and asked instead, "How did you get this table anyway, if it used to be for teachers?"

            He smiled and sat straighter, though he clearly knew why she was dodging the subject. "Well, they were supposed to be lunch monitors, but the mirror was so filthy most days they couldn't use it, and I guess the janitor didn't get up there often to clean it. By the end of summer, it was coated in crud, and the teachers were glad to give up and go back to their air conditioned staff room."

            "But it's clean now."

            "That's 'cause I clean it."

            Lily looked at the mirror at least ten feet off the ground and wondered how. Not making her ask this time, Xavier pulled something metal out of his backpack, unfolded it, and clicked three fasteners into place. "Compact stilts. You can buy anything over the web."

            "Doesn't anyone notice?"

            "Of course, but the students need their 'crazy boy' and the teachers like their staff room, so they leave well enough alone."

            "What about the people you're spying on?"

            "I'm not spying on anyone, just keeping an eye on the school perimeter."

            "Right. So what happened with Jen at the dance anyway?"

            Xavier shrugged, then seeming to take pity on Lily, he said, "Not _too_ much."

            Lily felt her cheeks warm, knowing what would usually get someone sent home from a dance, but it didn't feel right. Xavier had encouraged questions before, so she took a risk, "Wasn't there something abnormal about it?"

            Xavier's expression was so flat, she was sure he had no idea what she was talking about. Her cheeks burned, but she couldn't let it go.

            "The smoke—" Xavier still looked blank. She tried again. "The way she gets people to go along with her!"

            Lily felt like an overreaching idiot and would have left if her lunch wasn't all spread out on the table. Xavier glanced away, and she thought he'd say something cutting, but instead he said, "Maybe you saw more than I could. It was the medicine man who suggested we leave."

            Given how carefully Xavier watched Jen, he couldn't believe Lily had seen anything he didn't. Could he? At least he was being nice about it. "You're not mad at her?"

            "No."

            "Good, because she said to invite you to someplace called Chaco."

            "Chaco? When?"

            "This weekend, either dawn to dusk, or camping overnight to get the afternoon one day and morning the next."

            "What's she want in trade?"

            "Nothing that I know of."

            He shook his head gazing into the mirror. "If she wants me along, there must be a reason."

            Lily shrugged.

            "Does she know much about Chaco?"

            "Would I know? I don't even know what it is."

            "And yet she wants you along, why?"

            Lily had assumed she'd been asked as a friend, but that wasn't an assumption she wanted to examine too closely, and it wasn't any of Xavier's business.

            "Oh," Xavier hit his palm to his head. "I'm transportation and logistics. Aren't I?"

            "She has her motorcycle."

            "But would your parents let you go that way? Of course not. Now I could get a teacher to sponsor a history club and take us—"

            "By this weekend?"

            "Teachers are easy. But it would be even easier to ask my dad. He'll happily go to Chaco almost anytime, so long as he doesn't have to answer questions."

            "What is it with everyone and questions?"

            "Keep asking and you might find out."

 

            That Saturday, Lily woke in the dark and was outside two hours before dawn to meet the Parell's truck. She sat in back with Jen again, and mostly leaned into her corner, half asleep. Every time she opened her eyes, she saw Jen staring into the darkness. As often as not, she saw Xavier watching Jen in the side mirror. Lily was too tired to care and wondered why she'd wanted to see Chaco or even be with these people. But by the time the truck stopped, she'd mostly given up on sleep and was at least curious as to what would happen next.

            What happened only made her more curious.

            Chaco turned out to be a vast series of stone ruins. Jen took off into the nearest complex as if scorpions and snakes did not exist. Lily's predawn challenged brain took a while to decide that any self-respecting snake or scorpion would be asleep in a comfy hole right now. But there could be coyotes or spider or something, couldn't there?

            Lily entered the first ruined room through an intact stone doorway. It was nearly complete but for a roof, and she swung her flashlight carefully around. The stones were neatly layered and mortared in the walls. The room had a window and two small doors, and there wasn't any debris on the floor, nor a single spider web in any corner. It even smelled empty. Then Jen burst back in, bending though the door, even though she wasn't very tall, and took Lily by the hand.

            Jen wasn't using a flashlight, and Lily couldn't predict where they'd go well enough to make hers useful. Luckily, the predawn glow was brightening enough to almost see by. Jen led her in something like a crack-the-whip game through a dozen doors to a second story room. Lily could barely believe there were two stories standing in a building this old, but the stone floor and walls seemed solid.

            "You know how to turn off the flash on your camera?"

            "Yeah, why?"

            "When the sun first comes over the horizon, I need you to take pictures in all directions from here to show all the other rooms in this complex. Oh, and note the exact time."

            "I can set it to do that, but why?"

            "I'll come back afterward to check them, but right now I've gotta get to my position."

            Jen was gone before Lily could even say, "Okay."

            At least she had a good vantage point to watch Jen skitter away, out of the complex entirely and down a fair bit of trail at a lope almost like a run. Jen circled a smaller cluster of buildings and stopped at a nearly round one, also well preserved except for the roof. It seemed to have notches in the sides where logs might once have anchored the ceiling. That would explain why only the walls survived, but where had the wood come from in a desert like this?

            Jen went inside, which was also down, since that round building was dug into the ground with only short walls above the dirt. Lily, from her vantage point, could see Xavier outside, looking through one of the notches that might have held a ceiling beam.

            Then the sun began to break over the horizon. Lily set the camera to note the time and carefully took her pictures. She took two full sets all around her, just in case.

            She looked back to where Jen was examining a point on a wall inside the round building, as if she was noting each crack and speck of dust where the light hit. Jen used the zoom on her camera to see better for herself.

That was it. There was a beam of light coming though a tiny notch in the wall. The one Jen was examining was the brightest now, but there were other holes where light would come through brighter at other times of day. And there were lines on the walls, a couple of different horizontal lines that went all the way around the building. Lily wasn't sure exactly what it was for, but now it made sense why they had to be here all of the daylight hours. The people who built Chaco were keeping track of something based on when light came through different windows and lit specific places on the wall.

            As Lily understood it, the farthest points the light could hit should come at the winter and summer solstices. But then there were other days in fall and spring, what were they called? Equinoxes, when day and night were equal, except there was something about that not working right at all places at once, wasn't there? Still, it was October; they must be closer to an equinox than a solstice. But the fall equinox was in September, she thought. Maybe she'd gotten the whole thing wrong.

            Jen and Xavier were both exiting the round building now. They seemed to be arguing as they made their way along the connecting trail. Lily used the review feature on her camera to look through the pictures she'd taken. Sure enough, three of them showed light coming through a window and hitting another wall. None of those walls had obvious markings, at least not that showed in the pictures. But one of those rooms was where Xavier's dad had watched the sunrise. He was in her picture, although she hadn't noticed him at the time. It seemed like everyone knew what was going on but her.

            Finally, Xavier and Jen reached her second floor perch. They were no longer arguing, but Lily set right in with, "Did anyone think to tell me we were looking at light coming through the windows?"

            Xavier burst out laughing, and Jen half-smiled. When Lily glared at them, Xavier said, "Does morning make you more observant, or just more blunt?"

            "Fine, what were you two arguing about?"

            "No, you're right. Dozens of archaeologists have mostly agreed that in that kiva, the tiny windows are meant to channel light to some purpose. Doesn't it feel good to have discovered for yourself what took many learned people much longer?"

            "They didn't have ninnies like you to watch. And you're avoiding my second question."

            "Perhaps blunt and observant," Xavier continued, "I believe Jen scratched the wall to mark the edge of light, but she denies it. Shall we eat and see if that improves everyone's mood?"

            "Will someone explain all this over breakfast?"

            "Not likely, but we can make a start." Xavier smiled as if they were all the best of friends and as if he liked seeing Lily annoyed. It was annoying.

            Jen said, "You'll need to come up here each hour to take another set of pictures. You know when?"

            Jen knew precisely from the time stamps on her photos. "Forty-three minutes from now."

            Jen nodded approval and headed back to the truck.

            Breakfast involved screwing a small gas can onto the bottom of a metal thermos, turning a knob, and waiting. When the water boiled, they poured it over instant oatmeal in bowls and cocoa mix in cups. Xavier made hot tang in his cup, but neither Lily nor Jen was interested in trying that, and Xavier's father was nowhere to be seen.

            When they were seated and eating Lily said, "So tell."

            Xavier said, "That could take hours, even without consulting books or dad. You'll have to decide what to ask."

            Lily considered how he'd look wearing oatmeal on his head but valued the warm bowl in her hands too much. "What's the round place where you two went? You called it a 'kiva'?"

            "Ah, that would be the Rinconada Kiva, possibly one of the most studied of the supposed solar calendars left by the Ancestral Puebloans."

            "What's marked on the calendar?"

            Xavier raised an eyebrow toward Jen, who ignored him, so he answered, "Most obviously, the summer solstice."

            "And?"

            "No one knows for sure. The builders disappeared nine hundred years ago and no one knows why they did that or anything else. Researchers can't agree about their midden heaps, let alone their astrology."

            "Midden heaps?"

            "Rises, like that one," he pointed back down the path, "Contain the community's garbage, but people argue over whether that's all of it, how old the layers are, etc."

            "And what's the building I was in?"

            "Pueblo Bonita." He paused to drink hot tang. It was a very disturbing shade of orange. She waited for him to tell more, but he didn't.

            "What was Pueblo Bonita for? Why's it so big?"

            "Nobody knows. Some rooms have been identified as living areas or storage, changes in the stonework indicate how old various parts are, but that leaves plenty to debate. Chaco couldn't have supported enough people to fill all the rooms in all the buildings around here. So people think it was a religious or government center and only filled at certain times of year. Others suggest there was enough trade at the peak to support everyone."

            "And the windows?"

            "Which windows?"

            "At Pueblo Bonita."

            "No one knows."

            "Look," Lily pulled out her camera to review, "This one's set in a corner. They must have meant for it to line up with something."

            Jen came over to see the pictures and showed interest for the first time. They all clicked through, and Lily speculated on what might line up with what at different times of day.

            "We should head back," Jen said, and even though Lily knew she had plenty of time before the hour, she hurried to her position.

 

            By lunchtime, Lily was less enthusiastic. In addition to her hourly photos, she'd managed to get one good shot of light lining up through two windows and where it projected onto a wall. The wall had clearly been covered with something smooth like plaster once, but that was much too eroded to show any marks now. So if the alignment of those windows was significant, Lily didn't see how they could interpret it.             Nevertheless, she'd taken pictures of pretty much every room in Pueblo Bonita, and there were at least a hundred of them. The place was vast, and Lily could image people building the walls or stooping through the little doorways. But she never saw them or sensed them as she'd experienced people climbing the steps of the mesa. Part of her kept alert for a strange sensation of heat or presence, while another part tried to laugh it off.

Near noon, she made it over to the Rinconada Kiva and photographed everything there. Jen showed her the mark Xavier blamed her for, and it seemed obvious it was older, something Jen had just wiped clean. There were plenty of other marks too, marks made directly into the stone, though Lily doubted they'd been there for 900 years.

            Lunch was sandwiches, and lots of water, because it was hot. Xavier had come back from another complex, Chetro Ketl, to eat with them, but his dad was still over there.

            "You should go see it," Xavier said. "Ketl is the largest of these structures, and possibly the most mysterious. Lots of its rooms don't seem to have been living space, storage, or anything else identifiable. There're petroglyphs on the path over, too."

            "Sure," Lily said. It would be a long, hot hike, but she'd seen about enough of the structures here.

            "She won't make it back in an hour to take pictures," Jen said.

            Xavier raised an eyebrow at Jen and was ignored.

            So Lily decided, "I'll leave my camera here, and Xavier can take the pictures."

            Lily waited for a backlash. Jen looked skeptical, but Xavier said, "I'll promise not to skip any shots or miss any hours."

            "If Lily leaves right after one set, you'll only be responsible for one round. She should be back in less than two hours." Xavier rolled his eyes, but it seemed agreed. Lily left after the next set of pictures, without her camera.

            She actually enjoyed Ketl very differently without worrying about photos. Like Bonita, the floor plan filled a shape like a capital "D" with lots of little rooms built into the curved side. But Chetro Ketl was more like a maze, perhaps because it was less well preserved than Bonita. All the actual rooms and details were different, and of course, different parts had fallen down. She let herself wander for many minutes before seeking a high point to map it all together.

            She crossed paths with Xavier's dad once, but they didn't have much to say to each other. He suggested that she bring her dad to this place sometime. She wasn't sure if he meant the specific room, Ketl, or Chaco in general. But she figured they'd probably do all three if they did any.

 

            Having been allotted a maximum of two hours, Lily pushed the time to its limit, and had to jog back for the next round of pictures. She was sweating all over, and felt drips under her hair as she tried to hold the camera still. Xavier stood by silently as she turned and clicked. Then they retreated down a level to a shady spot by a wall. The thick stone still retained a hint of the morning chill, and Lily plopped down and pressed her back into the rough coolness. They reviewed the set of photos Xavier had done.

            "No one could tell which of us took which ones," she said.

            "Well, I promised not to skip any."

            "Are there some you would have?"

            He looked at her seriously for a moment. "Not over here," and he looked through pictures Lily had taken of where Jen was checking the marks at Rinconada. They weren't very useful pictures. She'd brought an unfolded cardboard box from the truck and propped it atop the curved walls on the side where the light came through. It presumably shaded the area enough to show which light came through holes in the walls, rather than through the open roof. But the cardboard blocked much of what the camera might have shown.

            "What's she looking for?" Lily wondered.

            "Finally you ask. I was beginning to think she'd clouded your mind entirely."

            "You're weird," Lily replied, but she remembered the strangeness she'd tried to ask Xavier about after the dance. It seemed like they just never noticed it at the same time.

            "Me? You persuade me to set up this trip because she wants it and then let her order your every hour without explanation? You spy on one part of a ritual with her and then bargain your way into another? And you ride along on her motorcycle not wondering why she chooses places and why she values your observations? All that, and I'm the weird one?"

            "She's my friend."

            "But were you always so unquestioning?"

            Lily was annoyed again, but it was the kind of annoyance that made her question herself. She pressed her back hard against the wall, and closed her eyes. A pattern like static seems to fill her eyelids. Was she different before they moved to New Mexico? She had always been curious and always noticed details. Until a couple years ago, she kept a box with strange items that had caught her eye. Most people's favorite had been two crab shells that joined at the middle, from Siamese twin crabs. But her own favorite had been a stamp of a mother and child with all the blue ink shifted a little to the right. The mother was wearing blue, so it looked like she was speeding away or washing out.

            She wondered which one Xavier would like better, and she knew that wasn't what he meant by "unquestioning." He'd already said Jen valued her observations, but he wanted her to ask why.

            Had she ever been the sort of person who asked why? Why had they moved to New Mexico? She'd asked about that, but maybe it was a different kind of why. She'd always thought of herself as curious. Why did she notice certain details and not others? Why did Jen dance in the smoke at the fire? Why was her dad changing the windows in their new house?

            Why hadn't she thought of the windows before? All day she'd been looking at windows, but she hadn't thought of her dad's windows once.

            Lily opened her eyes. She asked Xavier, "Is there any reason my dad would be adding or changing the windows in our house?"

            "Not the response I was expecting, but one I can handle." He straightened his shoulders and Lily thought he'd physically shifted into geek mode, but his eyes were focused on hers and didn't budge. "My dad designed Nuevo Nuevo drawing a lot from his historical observations. The spiral pattern of the streets and the window layouts in many of the houses were drawn from the Ancestral Puebloans. Over time, he's refined his ideas and helped people adjust the windows to make the light line up on certain days."

            "What days? Why?"

            "Days when people disappear. Your dad is working on something involving foster kids who disappeared. So he consults my dad, and starts modifying windows."

            "That's crazy." Lily had to say it, but she couldn't take her eyes off Xavier. There was something fragile in the way he stared at her, the way his mouth hung not quite closed.

            "If you want to see it that way." His jaw set tight.

            "What other way can I see it?"

            Xavier's shoulders drooped, and he pushed away from the wall and got up. "You're not ready to consider it."

            He ducked through a doorway and out of sight. What was he playing at? He said he wanted questions and then he left refusing to answer.

            Lily wanted to be angry. She sat for a while by the wall, waiting to be angry, and then wondering why she wasn't. She finally realized that she believed Xavier. There was something going on that she'd missed, because she hadn't asked the right questions, but it would be stupid not to ask now.

            She headed downstairs and found him waiting in the first shaded doorway. The doors were so small that there wasn't room for a second person. So she settled in the dirt by a wall with a little shade and tried to find the right question.

            "What do windows have to do with people disappearing?"

            "My father won't tell me."

            "What?"

            "My mother disappeared before I was a year old. From what people tell me, my father has gotten stranger and stranger ever since. He used to say stuff about her being a changeling and knowing when to cross over without a calendar, but mostly he doesn't like to talk about it to me. Just to anyone else who will listen."

            "I still don't see what people disappearing has to do with an old solar calendar."

            "But don't you wonder why you don't see it? You've certainly done well at seeing all sorts of other things." He glanced at his watch. "It's nearly time, you know."

            She couldn't believe an hour had passed, but Xavier was right. She climbed back upstairs to take more pictures. When she looked for Xavier afterward, she couldn't find him, not even in the set of pictures she'd just taken. Whichever way he'd gone, there must have been walls blocking her view whenever she looked his way.

 

            When they met up again for dinner at the truck, the whole conversation seemed far away and unreal. The day had been long and tiring. No one was inclined to chat. Lily didn't know how the Ancestral Puebloans had stood it, though maybe having roofs helped. She made it through the last set of pictures at sunset, but for the ride home she was sleepy again. She just wasn't up to asking questions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9

 

Log

 

            At school Monday she didn't talk to Jen or Xavier. It wasn't that she didn't want to, just that she didn't know what to say.

 

            That evening, when she was supposed to set the table, she saw her father motionless at the sink, studying the light from the kitchen window. In particular, he seemed to be looking at where it crossed the light from the window he'd painted at the top of the stair.

            "Whatcha looking at?" she asked.

            "Oh, nothing."

            "Nothing as in the light from two windows?"

            He raised the right corner of his mouth, in a mannerism she'd always associated with Westerns. Had he done that before they reached New Mexico? "You always did notice things."

            He was busy washing vegetables again, which was good because she couldn't speak for a moment. "What things?"

            "The bits that didn't fit. Places where nature played little tricks."

            "Tricks?"

            "Yes, have you studied any trickster myths at school?"

            "I dunno. Was Kokopelli a trickster?"

            "Kokopelli? I don't know much about that one. How about Raven or Loki?"

            "Nope." She wasn't going to get sidetracked that easily. "What about the windows, Dad?"

            "Oh, they're nothing. Just some people around here believe strange things happen on certain days from an old solar calendar. So I decided to set up the windows so I'd knew what was happening with that community."

            "What community?"

            "Did Xavier or his dad tell you anything?"

            "Something about a solar calendar at Casa Rinconada and people disappearing at dates that might be marked there."

            "Really? Maybe I should go see." Dad held the dripping colander over the sink and gazed out the window as if he could see the ruins.

            "Yeah, they said that. But they didn't say anything about a community."

            "Well, there's just this group of people here, and Xavier's dad made a Hogan and windows in these houses, and some of these people really believe they can predict nights when people are likely to disappear in the desert…"

            "And you think foster kids disappeared in the desert?"

            "No—I mean, maybe. Maybe if people believed these things and knew about such dates for many years, someone might use it as a cover, either to kidnap someone or to run away."

            "So did you check those dates against past disappearances?"

            "Well, that's the problem. Evan says he has evidence for a couple of them. But his evidence comes from checking old marks carved in ruins against the sun after people disappeared."

            "So you don't believe him?"

            "Well, some of his ideas are pretty bizarre. Right now, he's trying to predict the exact date, and some people are preparing offerings for the next alignment."

            "Next what?"

            "See, when the light from these two windows," he gestured toward the stairs and the kitchen, "lines up at that mark," he set down the vegetables and moved to point at a curlicue on the front door frame, "that's supposedly the first night in the cycle, and some people set out food or something handmade, something from natural materials."

            "Like leaving a dish of milk for fairies."

            "Yeah, something like that." He shrugged as if it was nothing and bent to look in the oven.

            "And then the fairies take away kids?"

            "Not so much. Some people say babies are swapped for the offspring of the gods at the end of the ritual, but others say it only goes one way. That the offspring of these spirits or gods are drawn home, and maybe more offspring are created, at the end of the cycle."

            "Created with the people who left the offerings?"

            "Some of them may think that way."

            "What do the others think?"             "Maybe that someone will come back. Evan never says directly, but I think his wife disappeared into the desert one of those nights. His way of coping is to try to understand the cycles, what days and years people disappear, maybe when they or others could come here." Her dad looked at the casserole he'd pulled from the oven and shook his head.

            "No offense, Dad, but you let me go places with this family, and you didn't even mention this?"

            "'To each their own philosophy,' and much like any other. I wouldn't have mentioned if they were Catholic, either."

            Lily shook her head. "So, you know when the lights are going to cross at the doorframe?"

            "I'm guessing the day after tomorrow."

            "And then what are you going to do?"

            "Not much. There's a place on the web where I can plug in our latitude and longitude and maybe back track to days in previous years with the light at the same angle. Probably more useful when we get to the end of this cycle, but I'll check both."

            "Not going out to the desert to see what goes on?"

            "Wasn't planning to, why?"

            "Dunno. I've just gotten curious."

            He didn't meet her eyes as he chuckled. "I think you forgot to set the table."

 

            Two days later, she was curious enough to join Xavier at his spy table.

            "Questions?" he asked.

            "Nope. Just came to share the mirror."

            "Why today?"

            "No reason."

            He shook his head like he didn't believe her, but went back to eating his lunch, which appeared to be two peanut butter sandwiches and a bag of greenish cubes. Lily unpacked her yogurt and a spinach salad with chicken.

            By the time she finished eating, it was clear something was up between Jen and Dave, the boy who had walked her to class when Lily first said "Hi."

            "Is Jen dating that guy?" Lily asked.

            Xavier shook his head. "Haven't seen them acting that way before."

            Jen was sitting next to Dave and looked at him more than at anyone else, which wouldn't have been a big deal, except that with Jen it was. Lily knew what it felt like to be the focus of that attention, and she could see that even in the moments when Jen looked at or spoke to someone else, Dave couldn't take his eyes off her. Other guys might put an arm around a girl's waist, but Dave was the only one who seemed to ignore everyone else.

            Will, on the other side of the seniors' table, seemed to be noticing the situation, too. He kept glancing at Dave, but he never said anything to draw Dave's attention away from Jen. No one else did either.

            "Want some candied yucca?" Xavier asked. He was holding out the bag of greenish cubes.

            "What is it?"

            Very slowly, he said, "The insides of a yucca, preserved with sugar." Then he added in a normal voice. "My dad makes it whenever he has time and sugar."

            Lily figured she might as well and took a piece between two fingers. It felt like under-ripe melon made sticky, but she popped it in her mouth. The sugar was good, but the after taste was more like chewing on grass. "Interesting," she said.

            "Yeah, my dad will put some out in a basket tonight. Sure you don't know why?"

            "Okay, my dad told me a bit."

            "Jen went out on her motorcycle yesterday," Xavier hesitated, as if that might be all he was going to tell. "As far as I could watch, she headed the right way for Chaco, and she was gone for over four hours."

            "Think we should tell her there are closer calendars?"

            He just shrugged.

 

            It was five that evening, and Lily was deep into an essay on Emily Bronte when her dad brought the phone, "It's for you." He had that fatherly smirk that meant, "It's a boy."

            She took it and closed the door, "Hello."

            "Hi, Lily. This is Xavier."             "Hi." There was a long pause, but he'd called her, so it was his problem.

            "I thought that after things today, well-- Jen just left in a truck with someone, and I think it was Dave."

            "You're spying on them!"

            She expected objections or silence, but instead he finished, "I think someone's following them."

            That silenced Lily.

            "I wasn't sure what I should do. My dad's not home, so I don't have a ride other than my bike. And by the time I got to where they are now, I might have lost them anyway. I just figured that you're her friend, so maybe you should at least know."

            "Like to call the police?"

            "And say what? It could be Dave's mom following them, or friends in a different car. If you want, I could call you if anything happens. Or you could come over here and watch."

            Something in the softening of his voice made it clear that Xavier wanted her to come over, but he'd already said his dad wasn't home. He'd never made any moves on her, but he was a boy. Still, she wanted to go.

            "Where are you watching from?"

            "My roof."

            That's what she'd hoped. Outside seemed like less of a risk. "When will your dad be back? Does he care if you have people over?"

            "He doesn't care, and he should be home soon. Will your folks let you?"

            "I'll see." She took the phone with her and headed downstairs. "Dad?"

            "Over here." He was at the dining room table, files open everywhere.

            "Could I go over to Xavier's for a bit? His dad's not home yet, but we're just going to look at some stuff outside."

            Her dad looked skeptical, and they both glanced at the curlicue on the doorframe. The lights no longer met there, but Lily could tell from her dad's expression that they had earlier in the day.

            "Outside where?"

            "Just by Xavier's house. We're looking with binoculars."

            "Let me talk to Xavier," he said, and Lily handed over the phone. They went through the same set of questions she'd already asked and ended with her dad saying, "I'll drive her over and then run some errands. But whenever I come back, I'll expect you to be in plain sight and on your property, right?"

            Xavier must have agreed, because her dad said "okay" and hung up the phone.

 

            After her dad left them, it didn't seem too weird to sit on Xavier's roof watching through binoculars as Jen rode in a red pick-up truck with Dave. They'd gone miles west on the highway and were now following dirt roads. The other car, a dark colored sedan, was still following them, but pretty far back, just following the dust they stirred up.

            "I don't think it's friends. They're trying not to look like they're following."

            Xavier sighed, "Probably cops then."

            "Why?

"I'm not sure. You can't guess where they're going?"

            "I think they're near a place with petrified wood that Jen showed me once."

            "Yeah, that would fit. But it's not illegal to go there."

            Then Lily remembered the petrified log at the bottom of a pit. She remembered the way Jen looked at it, and how it had been easier to climb out of the pit than Lily had expected. Had Jen wanted Dave, or had she brought him for the truck? "Is that Dave's truck?"

            "No, but I think it's his dad's, and he probably didn't have to steal it."

            "What if they used it to take a big piece of petrified wood?"

            Xavier nodded, "That would be illegal, and it would make far too much sense."

            He scrambled over to where his backpack lay and pulled out a map. "I've been considering the places you visited with Jen, and the petrified forest didn't fit the pattern, but look. If this is the mesa you visited first, and this is the rock out-cropping where the horses turned by an old Anasazi mound and the route the horses followed," he traced an arch with his finger, "And this is a similar mound by the Navajo ritual site we went to..."

            He seemed to be waiting for her to get it, but she didn't. She picked up the binoculars and saw the red truck had driven off road and stopped by a pit that could well be the one with the petrified log. The sedan had driven past on the road, but was slowing and turned even as she watched. The people from the truck, who she presumed to be Jen and Dave though she couldn't be sure from miles away even with binoculars, were getting out rope.

            "They're after the log, but why?"

            "Look. Look at the other three points on the map. If you draw a line between the mesa and ritual land, that's 4.2 miles. If you draw from the midpoint out, it's 2.1 to where our horses turned. And they follow the edge of the circle to the medicine man's house, which is also 2.1 miles out."

            She must have looked skeptical, because Xavier said, "It's also 2.1 miles from the center to my dad's hogan. I don't know how he chose the site or who chose the route for the horses, but I know neither was chance. You've been visiting points on a circle, all except the petrified forest, and I bet Jen's going to put that log at the center as an offering."

            Lily didn't know what to say. It would be easy to dismiss it all as crazy, but it was unsettling when everyone around her was involved. "Why?"

            He hastily put the map away. "Give me the binoculars."

            She did, and then she watched him watch Jen out in the desert.

            "The cops are watching from just a little ways down. They'll arrest them when they drive out with the log. We've got to get out there and warn them."

            "How?"

            "Could you call your dad?"

            "He's running errands, remember? And his cell phone never works here."

            "Your mom?"

            Lily had no idea how she would explain this to her mom. Did Mom even know why Dad had been messing with the windows? But she might be home from work by now, and if it was the only way to help Jen...

Xavier handed her a portable phone from inside. She dialed and her mom answered. "Hi, Mom. This is going to take some explaining later, but a friend of mine might be in trouble, and I need a ride out to the desert."

            "Right now?"

            "Yes."

            Lily could hear the sigh-of-a-put-upon-but-understanding-mother. "I just got home and started dinner. You'll explain enough to make up for that?"

            "I'll try, Mom."

            "Tell me where you're at."

           

            Her mom was there by the time they'd climbed down and left a note on the door for both dads. Rose was in the car too, so Xavier and Lily took the back seat.

            "Mom, this is Xavier. Xavier, this is my mom, Leanne, and my sister, Rose." Rose made a face. "Xavier can tell you how to get to where our friends are."

            As they drove, Lily tried to explain. "You see, there's a tradition here of putting out gifts on a certain night, which happens to be tonight. Dad knows about it. But my friend might be trying to put out a piece of petrified wood, and she probably doesn't know that removing it from where it is might be illegal. Anyway, some cops are waiting at the end of the road, and we need to warn her before she tries to take it anywhere."

            "Are you sure she doesn't know it's illegal?"

            "I don't think so, Mom."

            "Well, why are the cops watching her?"

            "'Cause Lily's hanging out with law breakers," Rose put it.

            Everyone ignored her.

            "I don't know, mom. Just Xavier was looking out over the desert with his binoculars, and he called me, and Dad took me over, and we sort of figured out what was happening."

            "Well, it sounds like your intentions are good." The Toyota bumped as her mom drove as fast as the road would permit such a car. "Let's go talk with these friends of yours and we'll see what's going on."

            At the end, Xavier directed them along a route that wasn't much of a road, so they came at the petrified forest around the back, relative to the cops. Still, Lily thought she could see the cops farther down, which meant they probably saw the second car drive up and park. Mom parked legally on the shoulder, just like Jen had the first time they came. Then they all ran across the sand, well away from any pits, to where they could hear the truck engine strain. Lily's mom brought up the rear, looking a little concerned about her at-home-clothes. At least she'd changed from work, but she still wore nice slacks and pumps, not sneakers and jeans.

            They reached the truck just as the log fetched up a few feet from the pit. It wasn't as big as Lily remembered, about the size of an overripe fire hydrant, but given what the fist-sized chunks of petrified wood weighed, it was probably heavier than a man twice its size. It seemed to have dragged up pretty neatly. There was a rut in the sand, but no deep pits or places where it might have stuck.

            Dave was driving the truck, and looked at them rather blankly, but when Jen saw them she raised her eyebrows and waved at Dave to stop. Dust settled all around them and all over Jen.

            "Hi, Xavier, Lily. Come out to show someone the petrified forest?"

            "Hey, Jen. This is my mom and my sister. They drove us out so we could warn you."

"Warn me?"

"Removing anything from this land is probably illegal, and there's a car at the end of the road that might be cops waiting for you."

            "Oh, really?" Jen looked the image of surprise, not at all like a senior in high school caught stealing rocks from the desert. Lily saw her Mom stop dusting her sleeves and smile at this display of a confused teenager looking like a kid who found something shiny. By this time Dave had come out of the truck. Jen turned and took his hand saying, "Dave, I'm so sorry for putting you through all that work, but it looks like we'll have to leave the log here."

            Dave shrugged and smiled as if girls dragged him out to the desert to catch and release logs every day. Then he quietly walked around to the truck's trailer hitch. Lily felt a shiver in her stomach as she watched. Something about the interaction between Jen and Dave bothered her. It was almost like jealousy, but Lily knew it wasn't that. Despite what politically correct counselors said about all feelings being okay, whether you felt them for boys or for girls, Lily knew this was something different.

            There was something about the moment when Jen took Dave's hand. It was like déjà vu, but Lily didn't remember Jen ever taking her by the hand. Had she? Had she taken her hand and led her away from something? Asked her to do something else? She remembered Jen touching her hair a few times, but it was some other time that she couldn't quite remember that seemed to make her stomach shiver.

            Rose came up beside her and said, "Your mouth is hanging open," in a taunting little sister way. Lily closed her mouth and looked back toward Xavier who was standing with her mom, watching the operation.

            In just a couple minutes, the log was untied and Jen had managed to convince everyone that everything was fine. She didn't seem at all upset by the failure of her plans, and Lily watched her in confusion. Why set all this up if it didn't matter to her? What had she planned to do with the log in the first place?

Jen thanked Lily's group before they started walking back to the road. Jen and Dave followed them out in the truck just as slowly. The dark sedan was waiting on the shoulder, and sure enough a uniformed cop stood beside it and another one sat in the driver's seat.

            "Hey there," the cop said.

            "Hello officer," Lily's mom said. She didn't look at all ruffled, though her slacks and blouse were dusty. Lily herself couldn't find her voice, just like last time with Will.

            "Stop your engines," the cop shouted at the truck, and Dave did. "Come on out."

            "Now what were you all doing out there?"

            Lily's mom smiled. "Well, sir, my daughter thought her friends had come out here to collect a piece of petrified wood. But then Xavier," her mom gestured like he was a Spaniel, "Told her that wasn't allowed. So they asked me to drive them out here so they could explain to their friends."

            "Xavier," the cop said. "You Evan Parell's kid?"

            "Yes, sir." The cop looked like he didn't approve of the answer and pulled a note pad out to write on. He turned to Dave and asked, "You got an off road permit?"

            "Uh, no, sir." He sounded like he was also having trouble speaking.

            "You got a driver's license?"

            Dave did. They went through identification and questions, until the cop said to Jen, "You're one of Alma Kree's lot?"

            Jen nodded, looking young and innocent with big puppy eyes.

            The cop just stared at her like puppy eyes wouldn't work if she lived with Alma Kree. "I think you, and your boyfriend here, and the Parell kid, had better come back to the station with me."

            Lily wondered why she wasn't being targeted, but wasn't about to ask a cop. Then her mom said, "Officer, I think there must be some misunderstanding. Xavier came out here with us as a conscientious citizen, and these two didn't cause any trouble once they knew better."

            "Mam," the cop's tone made it clear this was not a term of respect, "These two drove off road without a permit and may have damaged a protected area. At the very least there will be a citation and a fine."

Lily's Mom stood silent but did not look away, even after the cop stopped talking. Finally, the cop glanced to the side where Lily and Xavier stood. "If you want to take the Parell boy with you, I can always question him later, if need be."

           Mom nodded and they walked back toward their car. Rose, who had stood quietly in the background throughout, reached the car first and claimed the front seat. They drove away, and the cops watched them leave.

            Rose blurted out, "Bet they keep them overnight."

            "Rose, what makes you think that?" Mom asked in a too-high voice.

            "It's how cops teach kids lessons." When mom's answering silence dragged a bit too long, Rose added, "In books."

"You heard what was said. The boy will just get a citation and fine. The parents will be called, but no one's going to spend the night in jail."

"Right, Mommy. All cops are good and fair." Rose said it with a whine, and Jen realized her sister had been scared out there.

Lily remembered how she couldn't speak, realized she hadn't spoken since.

"Whatever you think, he let all of us leave without much fuss. I'm sure he'll be fair to Lily's friends. How well do you know them, Lily? That Jen seems nice enough, but I'm not sure about the boy."

            Lily just looked at Xavier, who looked about as amused as she felt.

 

 

 

 

 

10

 

The Law

 

            The next morning, before Lily even changed out of pajamas, there was a loud knocking at the door, followed belatedly by someone ringing the doorbell. Lily peeked over the banister and saw her mom, already dressed for work in a sensible gray skirt and jacket, walking toward the door. Her shoes click, click, clicked, right past where Lily could see, but she could picture her mom looking through the little diamond shaped window, and then she heard the door open.

            Mom said, "Can I help you?"

            "Good morning, mam. Are you Mrs. Leanne Thompson?"

            "Yes."

            "We'd like to follow up with you about an incident at the local petrified forest yesterday."

            "Please come in."

            "Thank you, mam."

            Lily saw her mom lead two police officers to the dining room table. She offered them coffee, and Lily decided she'd seize the moment to get dressed and hope she didn't miss anything.

            After pulling on jeans and a modest lavender tee shirt, Lily rushed back to the stairs to brush her hair and listen.

            "... not the end of it. The officers had found a log, seemed to have been dragged up from a pit. When they returned this morning, the log was gone."

            "Yes, I saw the log, but I had no idea anyone would go back for it. I drove my daughter out so she could warn her friends that they weren't allowed to take it. They seemed to understand and didn't seem too determined at the time."

            "Did your daughter tell you why her friends wanted that log?"

            "No. I don't think she knew."

            "Can you think of any reason they might have wanted something last night?"

            "No."

            "I notice you've been remodeling some of your windows, can you tell me why?"

            "What? Excuse me; is that some kind of a joke?"

            "Do you have any association with Mr. Evan Parell?"

            "I've heard of him from my husband, and I think the boy with my daughter yesterday, Xavier, is his son. Is that the right person?"

            "Have you met him?"

            "No."

            "Could we speak to your husband?"

            "He's already left for work."

            "Could we speak to your daughter, Lily Thompson?"

            "I suppose so, but I'm sure you realize, she's only a child who was trying to help some new friends."

            "I'll keep that in mind, mam."

            Mom came up and found Lily at the top of the stairs. She raised her hands palms up in a sort of "can't blame you for listening" gesture and motioned for her to follow back down. Lily left her brush on the handrail as she went, glad that she was at least presentable, but already feeling her throat tighten.

            Lily tried to sound calm like her mom as she entered the dining are, "Good morning." It came out very quiet.

            "Lily Thompson? We need to ask you some questions about your friends who were trying to take the petrified log yesterday. Can you tell me their names?" The man asking, a huge cop in uniform, looked like a grown-up version of Will. He had to be the bully's father, though he was being polite so far.

            She swallowed and said, "Well, their first names are Jen and Dave. I don't know their last names, but I think someone wrote them down yesterday."

            "How well do you know _Jen and Dave_?" There was just the slightest drawl as he said the names.

            "I'd never spoken to Dave except just that bit yesterday. Jen I met the weekend before school started. I've done stuff with her a few times on weekends."

            "And you spend time with her at school?"

            "Not really, she's a senior. I'm just a freshman."

            "And you're new here, moved in just a couple weeks ago, right?"

            Lily nodded.

            "Made any other friends?"

            Lily shook her head.

            "What about Xavier Parell?"

            "He's not a friend, just someone I sorta met through Jen."

            "So the two of them are _friends_?"

            "No, not really. I don't think so." Lily didn't want to explain how weird things were with Jen and Xavier, but the cop who looked like Will glared at her like he suspected something. The cop who'd come with him stood back deferentially, taking notes and holding a tiny recorder of some sort.

            "How did you know _Jen and Dave_ were going to the petrified forest?"

            "I didn't, exactly." What would sound least bad? "It was just, she was going out with Dave for the first time, and I wanted to make sure she was okay. So Xavier and I sort of watched with binoculars, just to make sure she was safe, you know?"

            The cop raised his eyebrows, and Lily knew he thought she'd been spying, and probably for worse reasons than she had.

            "And you saw her doing something illegal and went to warn her?"

            "Was what she did illegal? Xavier thought it might be illegal to remove the log from that area, so we warned her, and she didn't." Lily knew she sounded stupid, but didn't care so long as she sounded innocent. Her voice was almost back to normal.

            "Do you know what she planned to do with the log?"

            "No, sir."

            "Do you know of any special significance to yesterday?" If they questioned her dad later, it might come up that he'd talked to her about the windows and the door trim. She had no idea what Xavier would say, and they certainly would talk to him, if they hadn't already.

            "That has to do with the log?"

            "Anything at all that you can think of."

            "My dad explained that some day around then might matter to Xavier's family and maybe their belief system, but I don't know much about that."

            "Did Xavier say anything about that?"

            Her mind seemed all foggy now, and she had trouble remembering exactly what they'd said and what she'd assumed. At least she wasn't losing her voice anymore. "I think he might have said something, but not much."

            "You say that day was special to their belief system, and I notice you don't attend church. Has Xavier or his father been teaching you about their beliefs?"

            "No."

            "What exactly is your relationship with Xavier?"

            "Uh, it's not any sort of a relationship. His dad drove Jen and me to a couple things, and yesterday Xavier called and told me Dave was driving Jen out into the desert, but that was the first time I even went to his house, and we didn't go inside."

            The cop's stare made her feel dirty, and she wanted to be just the little kid that her mom had described. There was a pause while the silent officer flipped through his notes.            "Would it be okay if I got ready for school now?"

            "That can wait. I need you to tell me everything that happened after you spoke to the police last night."

            Lily was glad she had nothing to tell, and it calmed her down a bit. "My mom took Xavier home. Then we came home, and I finished a paper I was writing while Mom made dinner. After dinner, I did some reading for history and went to bed."

            "Did anyone contact you between when you spoke to the police last night and when we arrived this morning?"

            "No."

            "What about your father?"

            "Oh, he came home and ate dinner with us."

            "Anyone else?"             "My sister, Rose, was with us."

            "Where are your father and sister now?"

            Lily shrugged and her mom said, "Rose had to be at school early for cross country practice, so her father dropped her off on his way to work."

            The police took down more contact information and then left, probably to question her father. Lily turned to go upstairs and her mom stopped her. For a moment, Lily thought she was in trouble, but her mom just said, "If you need a little while to calm down before school, I'm sure it's all right to be late."

            But Lily felt fine now that the police were gone. She was even hoping to chat with Xavier at lunch, to see what had happened at his house.

            "I'll be fine. But could you make a lunch for me?" With a nod from her mother, she rushed upstairs.

 

            Before Lily could find Xavier, things started to go wrong at school. Dora, the preacher's daughter, whispered "devil worshipper" as their class filed into history. That made Lily look around more than usual, and she was sure kids were staring at her. While she was worrying about why, the teacher called on her, and Jen had to ask her to repeat the question.

            "What was the difference between gray codes and Jim Crow laws?"

            "The gray codes happened immediately after the Civil War and Jim Crow laws came later?"

            That answer should have gotten her at least a nod, and Lily was glad that she'd finished last night's reading, but her teacher just went on to the next person. Lily wondered if she was paranoid or if it wasn't just the students acting funny.

 

            At lunch, Lily sought Xavier out at his table, and a passing student, someone she didn't even know said, "The lovebirds are out in the open."

            "What's with that?" Lily asked Xavier.

            He just looked at her.

            "Should I go?"

            "It won't help."

            "Help what?"

            "By the end of lunch, the whole school will be convinced that I'm seeing you, Jen's seeing Dave, and we're all mixed up in some sort of satanic ritual that involves stealing from Indian land."

            "What did you tell them?"

            "Nothing. The police made up their minds before they talked to any of us, and I don't think they even found the log."

            "Do you know what happened to it?"

            He looked her in the eye and leaned forward to whisper, "Not that I've told anyone, but my dad and I drove by the spot you and I predicted, and it was there before midnight last night. This morning, it was gone before dawn."

            "But who moved it?"

            "Probably exactly who everyone suspects, but I didn't see her do it and I see no reason to say anything."

            They both glanced at the fish eye mirror. Was Will giving Jen funny looks? Was everyone sitting just a little straighter and less comfortably than usual at the seniors' table? Lily wondered if it was just her imagination. Dave was certainly seated as far away from Jen as the table allowed.

            At that point a couple more kids passed by and hooted at Xavier and Lily. Xavier sat back, and Lily unpacked her lunch. Mom's sandwich was soggy with tomatoes and mayonnaise, but at the moment, Lily had bigger worries.

 

            The next day, Jen didn't show up at school. Lily and Xavier first noticed in the mirror at lunch, but they thought she might not be eating at her usual table. Xavier devised a search plan and they both, discreetly, scoured the school. If people had mostly ignored Lily before, she noticed that some glances were distinctly hostile now. A couple of times she was sure kids whispered about her as she walked away, but it was nothing she could prove.

Finally, Lily went to the office and asked, saying that she was trying to return a notebook but hadn't been able to find Jen at lunch or at her locker. The office admin seemed reluctant to say anything, but told Lily she might as well stop looking.

            After school Lily biked to Jen's house. Her motorcycle wasn't there, and Lily paused in the driveway, still straddling her bike, wondering what to do. A teenage girl she didn't recognize looked out at her from a window but disappeared behind the curtain when spotted. Just when Lily was about to leave, the old woman, Alma, opened the door on the left. She stood, watching Lily, and finally beckoning her closer.

            Lily walked her bike over to the edge of the doorstep.

            "You're Lily. I remember the day we packed dinner for you and Jen." She said it as if it had happened long ago and it was significant that she remembered.

            Lily tried to think how long ago it had been, a little less than two weeks? Maybe at Alma's age, and with all the teens she saw, it was a compliment to be remembered. Alma looked seriously old. Her skin was all wrinkles and spots of darker and lighter skin. It was impossible to tell what color she'd been born, but having seen so many Navajo faces at the dance, Lily thought similar features lay beneath the wrinkles. But how'd she get a name like Alma?

            "Come in. Have some juice," Alma said.

            It wasn't an offer a kid could say no to, at least not to a grown up Alma's age. Lily said thanks and parked her bike at the end of the building.

            Inside, they walked to a dim dining area, almost identical to the one opposite, where Jen had fed Lily bacon snacks. This one had a larger, wooden table shoved into it. If all ten chairs were pulled out, no one would be able to walk through the room. On the table stood a metal pitcher with dried flowers and a laundry basket full of sheets. No one was visible in the dining or living rooms, but Lily heard a door shut down the hall with voices whispering behind it.

Alma brought two glasses of orange juice and set them at adjacent seats on the near side.

            "Thanks," Lily said as they sat down, but then she couldn't think of anything else. The silence grew as they sipped their juice. Finally she asked, "Do you know where Jen is?"

            "The police came by again yesterday evening. Not too long after, Jen took off on her bike."

            "And she didn't come back."

            "Not the first time."

            Lily wondered for a moment how there could have been a second time if Jen hadn't come back the first time, then she realized Jen must have taken off like this some other time, in the past. She also realized that Alma was clearing their glasses to the sink and her chance to ask questions might be over.

            "Aren't you worried about her?" she blurted.

            "No sense worrying about her type."

            "She's not a bad person." Lily had heard foster care people talk like that before, like some kids were bad types and there was nothing to know about them beyond that.

            Alma didn't show any such scorn on her face. She was calmly shuffling over to the laundry basket at the far end of the table. "No, but she doesn't belong here. She's a natural thing, looking for her place out there."

            Alma gazed in the general direction of the wall with a window, and Lily suddenly wondered how well the woman could see. Maybe when she'd gestured Lily closer before it was so she could see her face. Now Alma was un-tangling a blue sheet from the rest of the laundry. As she found two corners, she motioned with her chin, or maybe just her lips, and looked toward Lily again.

            Lily moved up to take the remaining two corners so they could fold the sheet, and Alma smiled.

            "Do you think she'll come back?" Lily asked.

            "I'd have to tell the police if she did. Besides, nature has a way of pulling back into place."

            "Police? They still want her?"

            "Want to take her in for moving some log. They never did understand these kids, ever since the old place burned down."

            Alma seemed tired; one side of her face was drooping. Lily finished the last folds for the sheet and picked up another planning to fold it by herself. But Alma reached forward and found two corners.

            "You feel anything out there?" Alma asked. Lily froze, but Alma brought her corners in to fold, so Lily had to match her.

            "With Jen, sometimes. Have you?"

            "Long ago. I was pulled to other places, before they were destroyed. My father might have made it, but I wasn't wild enough. I've felt others, but they were all paved or settled before I came here."

            "Other what?"

            "Other rings of powerful places. There used to be more, and at certain times of year I could feel them pulling, pulling me, pulling the scorpions, pulling things to be as before. But if part of the ring is too changed by people, the feeling goes away. Some people stop it on purpose, or try to."

            "What do you feel?"

            "The heat of emotion. The need to walk where someone walked before."

            "And the scorpions?"

            Alma just shrugged, handing Lily the last edge of the sheet, letting her stack it with the first one as she pulled out another. "Never understood the scorpions. Sometimes a lot of them come. I think some come from far away, where the other places used to be. Maybe they feel it sooner, to give them time to travel."

            "A bark scorpion bit my sister." Lily was excited, but Alma just nodded, like she'd already known.

            "Did Jen tell you?"

            Alma shook her head. "I thought you'd know by now, the true ones, it seems they can't tell anything, only do."

            "Do what?"

            "Come." Alma said it with a hunching of the shoulders that might be resignation, or might mean she'd almost dropped her edge of the sheet. They made two more folds in silence before Alma said, "And go."

            "Did you tell Evan Parell any of this?"

            Alma smiled again, a groggy smile that straightened the center of her lips and only pulled up at the corners. "He'll never understand. You, you can feel it. Why?"

            Lily wanted to say that she didn't understand anything, but thought that might stop Alma from talking. She pulled the last sheet out of the basket. It was frayed and a little shiny at the edges. "Did you ever feel like something was trying to push you or maybe kill you?"

            Alma looked at Lily face on and brushed fingertips with her as she took part of the sheet. "Where?"

            "The old bridge, the one on the road leading up to here."

            "What were you doing?" Alma kept folding, but she moved more slowly and looked away out the window.

            "Hanging upside down, thinking about falling."

            "Was Jen there?"

            "She rode up on her bike. It was the first time we met."

            "And you thought she caused it?"

            Lily shook her head. She didn't really think that, did she? Jen had been too far away, and she'd said it wasn't her. Or had she only said she didn't push her?

            Alma reached out, letting one corner of sheet fall as she set a cool hand on Lily's cheek. "I don't know what happened, but I don't think Jen ever meant any harm. Maybe someone had fallen there before. Maybe the place called you to it, maybe called Jen, too. Moments when people meet have power, as do those when they leave. If you met where someone else had left..."

            They finished folding the sheet, and Lily felt lighter. She knew that she'd been holding onto fear about what Jen might do, and now she knew it was all something larger. Perhaps it should be more frightening to have the land itself involved, but somehow Lily had known, and it felt better to admit it.

            Alma seemed changed, too. She started shuffling toward the front door with just slightly more bounce to her slow steps than she'd shown before.

            "Thanks for the juice," Lily said.

            "Of course. There's always someone comes looking, and I knew it wouldn't be the boy with the truck."

            "Dave? How'd you know he wouldn't come?"

            "They have their ways. I have mine."

            Alma was standing by the door now, and Lily knew she should leave. Passing through the door she said another "Thank you," collected her bike, and left.

            By the time she got home, Dad was there, trying to clear his mess of papers off the table.

            "I can help," she said.

            "Thanks, have you done homework yet?"

            "Not so much tonight. Dad, do you know anything about Alma Kree?"

            "She runs the halfway house your friend lives at, right?"

            "Yeah." Had her dad known Jen lived in a halfway house since he first spoke to Alma Kree? She wanted to say Jen was missing, but that might be the sort of thing Dad would have to report, and she didn't want to cause any trouble.

            "Did she used to have a different place, which burned down?"

            Her father looked interested, focused even, for a moment. "There was an orphanage that burned down, over by where the Parells live now." He shuffled through papers for quite a while before pulling out a paper clipped bundle. "Sixteen years ago. Evan says it burnt down on the first night of one of these cycles. Horrible mess with the records."

            Dad waved the bundle he'd pulled out, letting the pages flip open for just a few seconds. There were pages of children's records, each starting with, "Jane Doe" or "John Doe" followed by "AKA" and another name. Some of them then had another sheet attached with another "AKA" and a different name. "What's with all the names?"

            "It's not a nice story."

            Lily rolled her eyes, as if any child of a social worker hadn't heard plenty of unpleasant stories. "Spill."

            He moved other papers around the table, not so much organizing as neatening to no purpose. Finally he said, "One of the women who ran the orphanage disappeared the night of the fire, and was suspected of starting it. Most of the kids were found over a mile away in the desert and refused to talk. Therapists were called in who said the kids had probably been threatened and told not to speak, but the kids didn't say a word, most of them for months. The other woman who worked there was Alma Kree. She'd had some kind of breakdown and denied knowing any of the kids. So other people who'd had some contact with the orphans had to come in and try to connect names and records to these traumatized children. And there wasn't any place to house that many nearby, so they all got sent to different places, wherever they had space and treatment options."

            "Had the kids been in the fire?"

            "No, none of them were physically hurt, not even exposure from their time in the desert."

            "And the extra pages stapled on are when they decided the name matched to the child was wrong?"

            "For some reason, this area had poor records even beyond the losses linked to the fire. They weren't entirely sure what kids had been at the orphanage. The whole system has changed since then, of course. But there were other AKA's and adjustments in the files." Her Dad gestured to the papers he'd been neatening as they talked.

            "Is Jen listed in there?"

            "You know I can't tell you that."

            "Can you just tell me if she was in the fire or was one of the kids with uncertain identification?" Lily's mind was suddenly racing, wondering if Alma's and Xavier's hints about different kinds of people trying to find their place could relate to this, wondering why all of a sudden she'd started asking questions.

            Her dad must have seen something and been concerned, because he came around the table and put a hand on her shoulder. "Look, I'd be lying if I said I didn't notice your friends file once you'd called from the halfway house. But she doesn't seem to be connected to this area past a few months back."

            "Doesn't seem?" Lily knew she was fighting against confidentiality rules, but she'd never pressed for anything before.

            "Look, her records only go back four years, but they don't start out local, and that's all I'm going to tell you. Now help me clear the table."

            She did, only glimpsing a few pages as her dad closed folders. The paper clipped stack he'd waved got left on top, but she carefully didn't look at it as she set the table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11

 

Search

 

            Saturday morning, Lily woke to a scratching sound coming from inside her bedroom walls. At first she thought of rats within the sheetrock, but then she turned her head. It was something from the other side of the wall by the door, something scratching its way through. It was a soft sound, like scraping through chalk. Wasn't sheetrock sort of like chalk? The wall began to bulge inward. Lily slid quietly out the far side of her bed and peeked over.

            Her mouth didn't open and she didn't try to make any noise. Somehow, she knew she couldn't. Her body was tight and cold, like before warm ups for a trapeze performance, but she wasn't worried for her safety.

            Then fingers poked through the paint and pulled down, not crumbling any paint chips, just passing through with the wall intact. It looked like someone was trying to swim out of her wall. An arm and shoulder followed the hand, and Lily could recognize Jen, even before the pale face pushed through the paint.

            "I didn't know you could do that." Lily heard her own, normal voice say the words, but there wasn't any noise, and that was the moment when she knew it was just a dream.

            Jen pulled the rest of the way through, was pulling toward her, still swimming through the air, but looking like she wanted to reach out, maybe wanted to hide with Lily behind the bed.

            And then Lily was awake, in the bed and not beside it. Her wall was intact, and the early morning light was peeking through the curtains.

            She had to go down and look at those papers. She'd never done anything like it before, never seriously thought about snooping in anyone's records. As she crept down the stairs, she told herself she'd only look at the paper clipped bundle about the fire. Probably nothing there would relate to anyone she knew, so it wouldn't be like she'd really violated anyone's privacy. And if her dad didn't know, then he wouldn't have broken any rules either.

            The stairs were conveniently quiet, and the bundle referencing the fire was still on top of the pile her dad had made last night. Lily sat in her pajamas at the table and started to read. There was a report summarizing most of what her dad had said about the employee suspected of starting the fire and the other, Alma, who'd been referred to psychiatric care. There were pages on over twenty kids. Many of them diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder or various speech disorders after their ordeal. But dad was right, none of them had been physically hurt.

            Near the end, one of the youngest children was Erin Smallfoot. Erin had been four at the time and was described as "possibly albino." Even though Jen wasn't albino, that note caught Lily's attention. If this had been sixteen years ago, Erin would have been twenty now, but on the next page, a report from a language specialist said the child was making normal progress and might have been tall and significantly younger than originally assumed. It cited motor milestones, ages at which she'd used scissors and jumped rope, and emotional tests to support a revision of age and suggested the child be renamed and disassociated from the old records. The new name given was Erin Wilson, and the year she started school would make her a senior now. But Erin Wilson ran away from a foster placement at the age of twelve, and there was no record after that.

            Lily glanced through the remaining pages and then put them back on top of the pile. She very carefully did not look at anything else. Instead, she went to start breakfast.

            Her dad came in part way through and said, "Ahhh, bacon."

            Lily felt guilty about snooping even as she flipped a piece and asked, "Would you like to visit Chaco today?"

 

            At Chaco, she took her dad directly to Casa Rinconada and showed him the lines on the wall. "Did Mr. Parell tell you anything about how these marks relate to your windows?"

            Her dad turned around in a circle, admiring the mostly intact, igloo-shaped room. "No, he told me he derived a lot of his set-ups from ruins at Chaco and a few other places. Didn't he explain anything when you all drove out here?"

            Lily wasn't sure Xavier's dad had spoken at all beyond the car, aside from their brief encounter over at Chetro Ketl. She went to the wall and found the marks Jen had cleaned out. Lily was sure Jen wouldn't have made them.

            They traveled up and drifted right like tiny stairs. Would the top one mark the start of whatever was going on, the night Jen moved the petrified log? Or would it mark the end, whatever that would mean?

            Xavier had talked about Jen returning here after school, and certainly the sun was nowhere close now. "Come on dad, I'll show you some other stuff, and we can look at this later.

            She showed her dad the high point from which she'd taken photographs and the corner window that lined up light with two others at a certain time of day. She led him to where old layers of brickwork showed clear differences in technique, and her dad looked up details in a New Mexico guide book he'd brought.

            At lunch, Lily flipped through the book. It seemed that a lot of scholars were curious about Chaco, too. They were impressed by its architecture, the speed of building, and the complex society it appeared to support. They argued over its irrigation, astronomy, and religion. A thousand years ago, this might have been the center of the Ancestral Puebloan world, the pinnacle of its accomplishments. Then something happened in the 1100's. Certainly there had been a drought, but the builders and thinkers from Chaco and other sites somehow disappeared. Not all of them could have died off, but no other sites seemed to derive from their culture. Some researchers proposed a religious shift, and some pointed out minor connections to the Hopi and other groups (not so much the Navajo who later took over the canyon, Lily noted).

            She said to her dad, "Looks like people have been disappearing around here a lot longer than they've had Social Services."

            She'd expected a laugh, but Dad said quite seriously, "That's one of Evan's points."

            "Where does Evan think the people go?"

            Her dad shook his head. "I don't know, kiddo. I think he tries to keep an open mind, but he definitely acts like only some people can go and like most of them are going back, almost like they're fairy changelings or something."

            Lily thought about her dream. Did fairies walk through walls? She wanted to ask her Dad if he'd felt anything weird since they'd moved here. She knew he wouldn't dismiss her experiences, but somehow. She just didn't want to tell him about any of it.

 

            That afternoon she spent a couple hours at Casa Rinconada, even convincing her dad to hold a large sheet of cardboard for part of the time, as if there was still a roof. She saw when the light from multiple windows focused nearest each of the stair-like marks. It didn't line up exactly today, which probably proved it wasn't the right day. When it passed the last of those marks, Lily watched for what the highest focus would be. She was surprised to find a rather abrupt end.

            She noted the end location and inspected the tiny windows. Each had its own slant, but evidently, there was a common point at which the sun was too low, and direct light didn't make it though the holes. If the sun passed a little lower each day, the moment when it almost reached the holes would come a little earlier. Lily saw a vertical mark just before where the light had reached today. Would it end there in the near future, and that would mark the final day of whatever was going on? Would it agree with the windows her dad had installed? She wondered if her dad would have been happier living in Chaco.

            No, she could tell by the way he kept coming back to check that he was more interested in how the marks could be used now. But why? He didn't seem to understand any more than she did, and he had even less reason to believe. Still, he stayed all day without complaint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12

 

Finding

 

            Sunday morning Lily lay in bed. The sun reflected from a picture on her wall, a picture of her old circus troop, six girls in matching red sweats, posed with Puget Sound behind them. She'd had friends. She'd been good at something. In her own little niche, she'd belonged.

            Lily curled up under the covers and tried to go back to sleep. She was sure it wouldn't work, but when she threw back the blankets, the window's glaring light hit well below her old photograph. She got up and dressed in black, the same as her first day in New Mexico, tight jazz pants she could stretch in and a shirt tight enough that she could hang upside down. A bagel and a bike helmet later, she was heading down the highway.

            She didn't bother going the long way around. After the new bridge she followed the dirt track along the wash to the old bridge. Lily parked her bike and then stood by the railing. The feelings of the first day were all there. She remembered the pathetic goth freak from out of town who couldn't even kill herself properly and didn't really want to. The scene flashed through her head where something possibly known as magic tried to push her off the bridge.

            Then Jen had appeared with her brown and gold curls and black leather jacket, and Lily had thought she'd found a friend.

            No, at first she'd thought Jen had tried to push her off the bridge. Then she'd wondered why Jen took her out to a mesa with no sunscreen or food. After that, Jen had included her on crazy adventures but mostly ignored her at school. It wasn't like what Lily had called friendship before, and yet, she hadn't bothered to find other friends here. She hadn't found a new hobby or kept up her circus skills.

            Lily kicked her leg onto the railing and stretched as she tried to make sense of the last few weeks. Had she just latched onto Jen because she was lonely and miserable? Or was it that Jen was exciting and independent in a way Lily's younger friends had never been?

            Lily switched to stretching her other leg. Did Jen really like her? Or was there something to what Xavier and Alma said, some mysterious happenings in this area that could somehow involve Jen. Had Jen merely used her as an extra observer and travel negotiator? Had the way she'd been used involve something possibly known as magic?

            Lily swung down beside the railing, bracing her foot on a diagonal cable and her hand on a vertical pole. She stretched out into Angel and wondered if Jen was trying to disappear to some other place. Maybe Jen had already run off, hiding from the trouble she'd created by removing the petrified log. Maybe she'd given up on this town and its desert powers and changeling myths. 

            Lily switched to "reverse angel" and noticed something about the rocks beneath her. Twelve dark rocks formed an arrow pointing up the streambed to where she'd walked with Jen. Lily swung herself back onto the bridge immediately and headed up along the creek side path.

            By the time she reached the first rock art, she wished for her bike. As she reached the second, she was doubting her own observation of an arrow and wishing she hadn't been so hasty at the bridge. She climbed down into the wash, to the far side with the picture of Kokopelli, the spirals, and the child. In front of it, there was another arrow, this one made of twelve tiny, dark pebbles. It was definitely an arrow, and it pointed further up the wash.

            Lily kept walking along the center of the ravine. She realized she'd forgotten both sunscreen and water, and she was wearing these uncomfortably hot clothes again. Was she doing this out of curiosity? Friendship? Before she'd decided on a reason, she saw Jen.

            Jen wasn't wearing her leather jacket. She wore black jeans, a black tee shirt, and an old backpack with a metal frame that rose up over her head. She looked back as Lily approached, then bent over to pick up a palm-sized dark rock. She stood and dropped it into her backpack. From the sound, the pack was half full of rocks already.

            It had looked about the same size and color as the stones used in the first arrow under the bridge, so Lily said, "Planning to leave a lot of arrows?" It sounded rude, even to her own ears, but maybe Jen deserved that.

            "Not exactly," Jen said.

            "Then what?"

            Jen shrugged, "Just living outside their jurisdiction."

            Lily wasn't sure when police from elsewhere in the country could arrest someone wanted by local police, but she didn't want to argue. "I was worried about you."

            Jen stopped, looked annoyed, then picked up another rock, as if nothing had bothered her. "I told you not to count on me."

            "Huh?"

            "That first day, on the mesa."

            Lily tried to remember. Jen said so many peculiar things, that one had somehow faded in her memory. Now it felt as if Jen had known how things would go, as if she'd seen it all before.

            Lily thought of Dave, how flustered he was when the police said he couldn't drive off-road without a permit, how he sat well away from Jen the next day. Hadn't Xavier predicted that, said something about Jen using people? He'd challenged Lily to admit she'd been used in negotiating their invitation to the Navajo ritual. But he'd been as involved in that as anyone.

            Jen wasn't waiting for a reply. She'd found two more rocks to add to her pack.

            "Are you looking for special rocks?" Lily asked, thinking if she offered to help, that couldn't really count as being used. Then she remembered how she'd followed the arrows to get here and asked, "Why'd you leave the arrows?"

            "You were late, and I didn't know if you'd come."

            "Do other people know you're still in the area?"

            Jen shock her head, "Dark stones, fairly round. You can drop them in the pack."

            Lily wished she'd brought a pack, since it seemed wrong to make someone smaller carry all the weight. Then again, they weren't Lily's stones. She found a relatively smooth, roundish stone and held it out for Jen's inspection. Given the nod, she placed it in the pack.

            "Did you grow up near here, Jen?"

            Jen stopped again, forehead wrinkled in concentration. She looked right at Lily, in that way that seemed to see behind her eyes. "There's a kid in every grade school classroom who lies about what happens at home, what happened before, or what made them the way they are. Some were abused; some are just poor. Do you blame those kids? They get by. If they survive, does the truth really matter?"

            Jen walked away, searching the ground.

            Lily knew a back-off-I-deserve-my-space line when she heard it. She also knew there were times when someone had to break through.

            "Are you trying to tell me something bad happened to you?"

            Without looking Jen answered, "I'm trying not to tell you anything, but you seem to find out anyway."

            "I had a dream where you walked through my wall."

            "Really?" Jen smiled without looking up.

            "You scratched through, and I hid at first, because it seemed so real."

            "Scratched how?"

            Jen had stopped walking, and Lily demonstrated the first scratching motions she'd inferred from the sounds and then seen as fingers came through. Then Jen encouraged her to demonstrate the swimming through air movements she'd seen later. Jen watched with the attention she gave to finding landmarks. She even reached out toward Lily's hand at one point, but Lily pulled it back.

            "Interesting dream. Lily, you'd help me, wouldn't you?"

            In that moment of undivided attention while recalling her dream, Lily felt like she'd do anything for Jen. "Sure, what?"

            "I need two special rocks, from the petrified forest, and I'm worried cops will be watching for me."

            "Wouldn't they notice me too? They came to my house and questioned my mom and me."

            Lily half expected Jen to be shocked and say she'd had no idea, but Jen never reacted that way. "You wouldn't have to take them far. Just leave them for me, by the mesa?"

            The willingness to do anything for Jen was gone, like a layer of heavy mud suddenly washed away. Lily looked around the creek bed and realized how insane it was to be here without water. "Jen, I'm sorry. It's not that I don't want to help you, but—"

            "Whatever. It was just an idea."

            Jen walked on as if nothing had happened, but Lily couldn't believe she'd give up that easily.

            "You won't go there yourself, will you? If you're already in trouble, and it is against the law—"

            Jen just shrugged, as if it didn't matter.

            Lily started, "Please—"

            "Don't worry. I'll find someone else."

            Lily wanted to argue, but Jen started moving faster over rough rocks. By the time Lily caught up, Jen had found a whole pile of smooth rocks below what might be a small waterfall when the rains came.

            After they'd gathered those, Jen said she had to go.

            "Where?"

            Jen just shook her head, and Lily was back to wondering if they were friends or if Jen had just lured her there to ask for more petrified rocks. But how had Jen known she'd come today and look down from the bridge? Had the dream been a kind of summoning to get her to the arrows, to get her to where Jen could ask a favor? Aside from being improbable, that seemed really, really cold. Lily sensed there was something she hadn't connected yet, but she had no idea what to ask.

            Jen reached out a finger and tapped Lily's nose. "You're getting burnt."

            Then she climbed out of the wash and headed farther away from town. Lily considered running after her, but couldn't move for a moment. When Jen passed out of sight, Lily began to scramble after her and almost put her hand on a scorpion. It was small and lay sunning itself on a rock at the top of the wash. Lily couldn't be at all sure, but it looked like the kind that bit her sister.

            Carefully drawing back her hand, Lily went up another way. When she reached the dirt trail she headed back toward town and the bridge where she'd left her bike, her water, and her sunscreen. She wondered if she'd even see Jen again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13

 

Threats

 

            As Lily trudged back toward the bridge and her bike, she wasn't paying a lot of attention. She pushed at her hair when it stuck to her face and saw the dust puff from under her shoes, but the sun was too bright to encourage looking up or looking forward very far. Then some noise, a shifting of cloth or maybe a breath, made her suddenly aware that someone was there.

            She looked up to see Will, the bully from school, the policeman's son, standing between her and her bike. A heavy mountain bike was lying on the ground just beside him. She'd never seen him bike before and would have guessed he owned a car, but maybe he'd wanted to travel where a car couldn't go. His clothing and skin were covered in dust, as if he'd been rolling someplace where the ground was broken up, and as she approached, his arms were crossed in that big and angry pose all bullies seemed to know.

            "Well, look who's out here all alone. You weren't meeting up with that Jen girl were you? 'Cause she's a fugitive from justice, and that would be aiding and abetting a criminal, I suspect."

            "I was just walking," Lily said. She wondered if it could be aiding and abetting just to talk to someone and not report it, but either way, she wouldn't have to report it to Will.

            "Why would you leave your bike here to walk further down the same path?"

            "I was walking down in the wash. I just came back the easy way."

            "You really shouldn't go walking alone out here, especially in a wash. You wouldn't believe how many people die down there, flash floods and such."

            "I'll be more careful in the future," she said, meaning she'd hide her bike from prying eyes. "Now if I could just have my bike--"

            "When I've been here protecting it for you all this time? Don't you think you owe me a little something?"

            "Like what?"

            "Either you tell me where your friend is or," at that point he grabbed her arm and tugged her up against his chest, "Or you give me a nice wet, juicy kiss."

            Lily was every bit as scared as she'd been back at school, but here there was no one to intervene. Somehow, that kept her from losing her voice, and she said, "I can't help you with either of those, but if you'd let me go before someone comes driving down this road, I'll just be on my way--" She was already studying the positions of his bike and hers, when Will suddenly kicked out behind himself and sent her bike toppling into the ravine.

            For a moment, she was shocked that he'd pulled it off, even though he was a lot bigger than her. Then she remembered the work she'd done on circus bike tricks. Circus bikes were lighter and built slightly differently, but the principals should apply to regular bikes. Will's bike just happened to be lying to her left, balanced on a pedal, with the wheel lifting into the air. That made a lever, just like a teeterboard or a little kid's seesaw.

Her weight shifted as if she was switching feet on a static trapeze. Her left foot stomped the wheel on Will's bike, forcing it to the ground as the frame and seat rose up. Somehow it rotated up just right to punch a handlebar into Will's ribs. As he released Lily's arm, she grabbed the handlebars so the bike did a wheelie, knocking its owner back toward the ravine. Her free arm slammed up into his nose and he pulled back, instinctively bringing both hands to the injury. Her eyes had time to register some blood, though not as much as she'd expected, before she hopped on his bike and started pedaling as fast as she could.

            The seat was too high, so she peddled standing up over the bar. Will was out of the wash and chasing her after a minute, but there was no way he could catch up without a bike. At least she knew he wasn't badly hurt. Suddenly, delayed fear hit her, and she felt her arms go a little shaky, but not nearly enough to make her stop biking. She was almost to the new bridge, when she heard Xavier calling, "Over here. Leave the bike in the yard and come inside, quick."

            Lily turned in, dropped the bike, and ran up the front steps. As soon as she was in Xavier locked the door behind her.

            "Did he hurt you?"

            Lily shook her head.

            "Come upstairs. My Dad's calling the police."

            Lily followed him up into a huge room with a circle of folding chairs, two sofas, and two large tables pushed up against the walls. Mr. Parell was on the phone saying, "I want someone over here right now. I just witnessed an assault and the girl is being pursued toward my house."

            The girl was in fact standing right beside him, and they were all watching Will through large, picture frame windows that overlooked the wash and the whole Nuevo Nuevo development. But Evan was narrating a slightly time delayed version into the phone. "My son is calling the girl over to our house, but some man is chasing her, and I have no idea what damage he might do. I want my property and the girl protected."

            There was a pause and then, "Well, tell them to hurry."

            By now Will was running into the yard, "You vicious, nasty, bitch. I'll make you pay!"

            Mr. Parell held the phone out the window for the latter part of Will's threat. "What exactly are you threatening, young man?"

            But at that point Will seemed to realize this wasn't the time for more threats. He stormed over to his bike and headed back over the bridge. Mr. Parell hung up the phone. He held it out to Lily saying, "Here, dear. Why don't you call home? If the police want the rest of the story, they'll just have to come out and get it."

            Lily didn't fully understand right then, but she dialed home, got the machine, and left a message saying she'd had a run in with a bully who knocked her bike into a ditch. She said she was fine and that Xavier and his dad were home and helping her. Then she let the machine record silence for a minute before she thought to hang up.

            She looked at Xavier who was standing by the window. His dad had left the room, and she could hear him moving about downstairs. "Will the police really come?"

            "Yeah, I suspect that was dramatic enough for them. Probably just start more trouble for all of us, but Will may get told to leave you alone."

            "And?"

            "And it brings the car in from patrolling the desert, just in case you were meeting who I think you were."

            She was about to talk but he said, "Don't tell me that part. Not right now anyway. Just make sure you're ready to tell the cops what happened. Your bike is still there as evidence, and my Dad and I can attest to what we saw. Even if nothing comes of it now, getting this on record is the best thing for you and this town in the long run."

            Xavier sounded calm like her dad and all of a sudden Lily felt safe. She didn't want to, but she started to cry.

            Looking somewhat uncomfortable, Xavier nodded and said, "I'm really glad you took care of things. There was no way my dad, or me, or the cops were going to get there in time. All we could do was call, you know?"

            Lily nodded. The tears kept coming, but she was proud that she'd stood her ground, kept her voice, and pulled off that bike trick.

They both waited, looking out the window without another word, until a police car pulled up, coming in from the desert.

 

            By the time the police came, the tears had stopped, but Lily was sure they'd left streaks all over her face. Perhaps that would be an advantage, make her story believable. Lily still wasn't sure how she'd used the bike so successfully or if she could do it again to demonstrate, but she headed downstairs to explain.

            Mr. Parell greeted the two officers and let them in. They were the same two who'd questioned them out in the desert before, and they were cool toward Mr. Parell, making it clear they wanted Lily to tell her story first. She tried to explain how Will had been standing with the two bikes, but as soon as she named Will Moran, an officer asked, "You sure that's who it was?"

            "Yes. He's bothered me at school, too."

            "We'll get to that, finish your story."

            She tried, but no one pressed for any details. When she finished they asked, "You're saying Will had you by the arm and you managed to push him into the wash?"

            "Yeah, I'd done some work with trick bikes at my old circus school, but I was surprised it worked."

            "You just moved here?"

            "From Seattle."

            "And they teach girls to hit people with bikes like that?"

            "They teach lots of things, but Will's bike was all I had to work with at the time."

            "You're lucky. Someone could get mad, especially if he wasn't really meaning to hurt you."

            "It sure seemed like he meant to hurt me. Last time, the bruise on my arm lasted for days, and I only got out of that by chance."

            The officer took information on her previous interactions with Will and on what the Parells had seen. Then they went out to see her bike, and Mr. Parell went along with his truck, saying he'd bring the bike back and fix it. He also grabbed a camera on his way out, so Lily figured he was planning to take a few pictures of the only evidence they had.

            As the door shut she found herself alone with Xavier. She didn't want to start crying again, so she asked, "Could I have a glass of water?"

            "Sure," he said, and she followed him to the kitchen. He motioned her to a tall chair at a breakfast bar tiled in black and brought her a slim glass of water with ice. Lily noticed that two windows in their kitchen were stained glass with one clear, diamond-shaped pane in each.

            "So, is your dad waiting for the last day of whatever it is, too?"

            Xavier followed her gaze and jerked his chin toward the window she'd been staring at. "That's right, he sold your dad the window kits. You're in one of the newest houses over there, and he's got them pretty well aligned with the old calendars."

            "But why?"

            Xavier shrugged, "You won't believe it 'til something happens you can't let pass."

            Lily wanted to shake him. At the moment she didn't know what she believed. "Look, maybe nothing's going to happen in the desert the next time the light lines up. But if you and my dad and my best friend are all waiting for it, I'm willing to at least entertain some possibilities."

            Xavier gaped, "You think she's your best friend?"

            Lily shook her head, she didn't know why she'd said that. Had Jen really played her all morning to persuade her to steal some petrified rocks? "Look, let's forget about what I think or believe. What do you think is going on?"

            "My dad thinks some people, well, maybe they aren't quite people, or maybe they're part something else. Some of them seem to be drawn here. Sometimes they just show up in our desert on the right nights, without knowing anything about the solar calendars or old legends."

            He stopped talking but sat opening and closing his hands, like there was something he could grab in his words.

            "But Jen's looking for calendars, rock drawings, all that," Lily said.

            "Yeah, she's been talking to Alma. And maybe she's not as able to feel it as some. Or maybe it's just that they took her away so young, and she didn't grow up around whatever it is."

            "How do you know they took her away when she was young?"

            "You know about the fire?"

            She nodded.

            "We think a couple of kids who came back four years ago were changelings," he glanced up when he said the word, but Lily tried not to react, "From that fire. But we didn't know as much then, and we must have been off by a night. They disappeared a night earlier than we expected. Somehow they knew, or at least one of them did."

            "Two other foster kids?"

            "No one knows. Two teenage boys were hiking around with backpacks for a couple of days. They went to the same sorts of places that Jen took you, and then they disappeared."

            "Didn't anyone investigate?"

            "No one even knew who they were, or if they just hiked or hitched away one night. My dad was trying to watch them, but there was almost no moon that night, and he really thought it wouldn't be 'til the next."

            "So now you're watching Jen."

            He refilled the water glass she'd emptied without noticing, and then sat down across from her. "Look, I don't know what to believe either. As a kid, my dad talked about my mom and others disappearing as if it were part of local history. Then I got old enough to be teased and hear what others said, and for a while, I believed he was crazy. After those two kids disappeared, just a day before he said they would, I couldn't help but wonder. Other people were coming by then, coming to hear what my dad said. Lots of them claimed they lost kids or lovers out here. It seems like it happens certain years, but not others, always on a certain night. And you gotta admit, it's weird that Jen visited those same places and left that log at the focus, and it sure seems to have disappeared. Maybe the others left something too, and we just didn't notice."

            "So you think they're different somehow and they just do this stuff by instinct?"

            "I've come up with lots of theories."

            When he didn't continue, she asked, "Such as?"

            "Why should I tell you?"

            "Because you want to?"

            "You wish."

            "Well, why not?"

            He snorted, like the answer was obvious.

            "Even if I don't believe it all the way, I might be able to help."

            "Or I might just indulge your curiosity."

            She raised her eyebrows, and he smiled.

            "Okay, that rock you helped Jen find, with lots of spirals, Kokopelli and the smaller person, what if the spirals are the others and on the night of Kokopelli's fertility rite, they can come through and either swap children or somehow put part of themselves in. Then the children grow up here, but like fish or birds, they have some sort of homing instinct that brings them back."

            "So this is like fairies; that's what you mean by changelings?"

            "It would only make the theory stronger if it happened in more than one place and was discovered by more than one culture."

            "So why do you think the spirals or whatever do this?"

            "Well, diversity is supposed to strengthen a population, and the spirals in the drawing are all the same. Whether it's cultural or genetic, they must be getting something out of it."

            "Maybe the person who drew the spirals all the same couldn't see whatever was there very well."

            "You have a better theory?"

            "That you're a geek and I'm an idiot?"

            "Guess that explains why you keep coming to visit."

            "That, your constant spying, and your willingness to intervene with a bully."

            It would have been better if Mr. Parell had returned then, but instead they sat for half a minute, kind of embarrassed and not knowing what else to say. Finally, Lily just asked, "Are you or your dad planning to stop Jen if she tries to go—wherever?"

            Xavier shook his head. "My Dad may still hope that my mom will come back, but mostly, if we could see someone actually go that way, then we'd know it was real."

            "But your dad already believes it enough to convince others."

            "There's belief and then there's evidence. Wouldn't you want to know?"

            Lily had to admit, she'd watch if she could, even if it meant sitting on the roof with Xavier and his binoculars. "Are you sure you know when to watch now?"

            "Probably, but as you said, I spy all the time."

            "You don't spy on other people, do you?"

            "Hardly ever."

            She glared at him but decided not to ask. "So when?"

            He could have pretended not to know. He could have kept it secret, and for a moment Lily thought he would. Then his face broke into a wide, sincere smile, and he said, "Tuesday night. You coming?"

            "Sure, but it's a school night. How will I—"

            "I guess you could invite your dad, too."

            That felt right to Lily. Her dad was tied into this. Besides, it would actually be less weird than if she was just with Xavier.

            She'd emptied her second glass of water by the time the police drove past and Mr. Parell pulled in.

            Lily and Xavier went outside to meet him, and pulled the bike from the back of his truck.

            Mr. Parell looked closely at the wheels and said, "I think it's okay. We'll just go check the spokes and lube the chain."

            He started toward the garage, and Xavier asked him, "What about the cops?"

            "Oh," long pause, "They took their report. I told them I'd copy the photos. If we're lucky, nothing will come of it."

            "Nothing?" Lily asked.

            Mr. Parell looked at his son, maybe used that Navajo chin pointing move. Lily wasn't really sure. Then he started digging around in a tool box. He found some tool to pull along the bike's spokes before Xavier looked up again and tried to explain to Lily.

            "Sometimes, doing the right thing when powerful people are involved just leads to other kinds of trouble. Enough trouble like that and you'll wish they'd just ignored you."

            After that, they talked about nothing other than the bike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14

 

Trouble

 

            Monday morning, Lily found her locker covered with tape. It was blue tape in overlapping vertical lines running right up to the vents. It didn't even look that bad against the gray paint, but Lily felt conspicuous, and she was sure lots of other kids were looking at her. Still, she'd be even more conspicuous if she didn't have her books for class, so she spun the lock and looked inside. There was a note, much like the one she'd seen in detention.

            "There was graffiti on your locker, so I taped it like the janitor would and reported it. Don't worry about it. This is why I keep my own roll of tape. -Xavier"

            Lily stood looking at the note, not sure whether she was more shocked about the graffiti or that Xavier had taken care of it before she even got to school. She'd never been the type to have her locker targeted, though she'd been bullied enough in grade school to remember the fear. Quickly, she sifted through her books and folders, making sure nothing had been hurt and no other notes had been inserted. It seemed clean, but Lily was reluctant to leave her stuff unprotected. She piled out all of her folders for the day as well as the first books she needed. Then she had to run to class as the first bell rang.

            In her first class she got only stares. She noticed a couple of kids wore pins with a circle slash over a red devil with a pointy tail. Most of those students also wore a second pin with a circle slash over Kokopelli. Their depiction of Kokopelli showed him playing a musical instrument, sort of like a recorder, rather than being an obviously naked male.

            Second period, in English, several classmates passed a note around, glancing and snickering. Eventually it was passed to Lily, and she saw herself depicted as a devil with horns and a tail. The low cut dress with a ragged hem made her cartoon self look rather more womanly than she was.

Lily's cheeks grew warm and she swallowed a lump in her throat. The drawing made her look like a slut, and she wondered if other guys like Will would take that as an invitation.

Then she remembered the reality and how she'd stood up to Will. She looked down at the drawing again. Many girls at her old school would have found it flattering.

            Across the room, she caught Dora's eye. She smiled and the preacher's daughter's nostrils flared. Lily was sure Dora had drawn the picture. She wondered if Dora or her family had distributed the devil and Kokopelli pins as well. Maybe not making friends or fitting in here had been a mistake, but it could also make things like teasing and locker graffiti more bearable. Lily did her best to keep her head up and ignore glares and name-calling for the rest of the morning.

 

            At lunch, she went to find Xavier at his table. Someone cat called as she walked over, and she smiled and winked at them.

            Xavier nodded to her afterward and said, "You seem to be doing alright."

            "I've never been the school bad girl before."

            Xavier blushed and Lily got busy unpacking her food. Today she had leftover pasta salad and a banana. It did not seem like a bad girl lunch, which was comforting in its own way.

            "My dad said we could join you Tuesday night." Lily was looking up toward the fish eye mirror as she spoke and noticed it was covered in dust. "Hey, you didn't clean the mirror."

            "No time, and it doesn't really matter now."

            Lily realized that cleaning the mirror was probably one of the reasons he came to school early. "Thanks for taking care of my locker."

            "No problem," he said, but he sat up a little straighter. "I just hope we get something out of Tuesday that's worth it.

            Just then, Will and two friends, maybe the same two who'd stood with him when he harassed Lily in the hall, came around the corner.

            "Oh, look at all the trash on this table," Will said. "Maybe we'd better clean it up."

            Will grabbed hold of the end of the table and his buddies each took the attached benches.

            Xavier whispered, "Run!" as he spun himself off his bench.

            Lily started away, but saw Xavier standing his ground behind her. Her legs kept moving, though she felt like a coward. What trick could Xavier use with three guys that size? She wasn't naive enough to think he could talk his way out of this. All she could think of was how Xavier seemed to have saved her from Will before. She ran for the fire alarm, broke the seal and pulled. Then she looped back near the corner, where she could check what was happening to Xavier.

            The bigger guys were all around him, but they hesitated as the siren began. Then a teacher, Mr. Morales from Algebra, came from the other direction. "To the field boys, line up with your after lunch classes."

            He walked between the buildings where they stood, and when no one moved he repeated himself, "To the field. You know the drill."

            It worked. Somehow Will and his tough friends went with Mr. Morales, and Xavier tagged along behind. There was something in how he moved that said he might have been punched, a little stiffness and leaning toward his left side, but Lily was convinced she'd helped.

            As she made her own way to the field, she wondered what the punishment was for causing a false alarm. All of a sudden, she felt really stupid. There must have been a dozen better solutions, but she'd gone straight to breaking the rules. She'd broken a law. Even after her "bad girl" joking, Lily knew she wasn't that kind of person, no matter where she fit in at a school.

            As they reached the yard and Mr. Morales stood where his class lined up, Lily went to him and said, "Mr. Morales, I wanted to tell you, I pulled the alarm to keep Will and those other boys from beating up Xavier. I know it was stupid. Can you tell me what I need to do now?"

            Morales looked at her like what she'd confessed was improbable, but after a moment he said, "You should probably tell the vice principal." At her blank look he said, "Over there in the blue button shirt." He pointed toward a hefty balding man, and Lily started walking. She thought she should feel like a prisoner walking to the gallows, but she didn't feel it. She felt numb, not even as embarrassed as she normally would feel just walking across the field in front of all those kids in lines.

            By the time she got there, her eyes were damp, but her emotions seemed to drift like a kite at a distance. She tried to stand up straight as she told the man in blue, "Sir, I've come to admit I pulled the fire alarm. I was trying to stop a kid from getting beaten up, and somehow I couldn't think of anything else fast enough."

            "Are you telling me there is no fire?"

            "Yes, sir."

            "Wait here."

            He walked off and spoke to another man and a woman. By that time everyone could hear a fire engine approaching, and the vice principal headed out to meet them.

            Lily stood where she'd been told, just looking at the ground. She didn't want to be the out of place new kid who had undoubtedly done something wrong, but she doubted it could hurt her reputation much at this point. There was something comforting in that.

            Then her emotions hit her in the stomach. She turned to face all the way away from the students as tears started down her face. The vice principal and a fire fighter started walking toward her, and she knew just how badly she'd blown it.

            But the vice principal and fire fighter stopped, to update another man and woman, and soon all the classes were being dismissed, to finish what was left of their lunchtime. Lily had all that time to feel miserable and cry out streams of tears. She stood with her back to the crowd and didn't even wipe her face until she felt the tears slow down. Her neck and the collar of her tee shirt were soaked when she finally used the back of her hands to wipe at the stinging salt water on her cheeks. Then the vice principal brought the fire fighter over to Lily.

            The firefighter wasn't wearing his helmet, but he was in heavy yellowish clothing with reflective stripes. It didn't look very comfortable. "Are you the one who pulled the fire alarm?"

            "Yes, sir. I'm sorry."

            "Do you know how much it costs this city to respond to false alarms?"

            "No, sir. I was just scared, and maybe I panicked. I don't know why I did it."

            "There's no excuse for it. What if there had been a real fire somewhere else?"

            Lily realized he had a point, and that really would have been bad, but what could she say? "I'm sorry, sir. I won't do it again."

            "Make sure of that." He sounded serious and annoyed, but not mean. He nodded, probably to the vice principal and not to her, and then he headed back to his fire engine.

            "Well miss, I think we'd better go call your parents." The vice principal sounded mean.

            Lily followed him back to the main office. He led her into a smaller side office labeled, "Garth Harlick, Vice Principal." It had a wooden desk, a metal file cabinet, and three swivel chairs. Lily sat in one as he questioned her.

            "What's your name?"

            "Lily Thompson."

            "Oh, I've heard of you."

            She couldn't help thinking, 'Hasn't everyone at this school?' But she kept it to herself. A few new tears were coming to her eyes.

            "Stop with the tears already. I know you've been involved with the police since you came to town. And now this."

            "I never did anything like this before."

            "So, why now?"

            She told the whole story and ended with, "You can ask Mr. Morales about the last part. He probably saw what those boys were up to."

            "Now you're trying to blame this all on Will? Funny we hadn't had any complaints until you came along."

            Lily found that hard to believe, but Mr. Harlick showed no inclination to check the facts. "Whatever you thought was happening, pulling a fire alarm is a crime unless there's a fire. I don't know what you got away with at your old school, but it's not going to be tolerated here. I'm only going to give you three days suspension this time, but trust me, it will be much worse if you're ever sent here again."

            Lily didn't bother to mention that she hadn't been "sent" this time. She went to sit in the hall while Mr. Harlick called her parents to come get her. It was well into the next period before her mom appeared, prim and proper in her work suit and clicking heels, face fixed as if she could spit fire.

            She walked straight up to Lily and whispered between her teeth, "You have no idea how much trouble you're in. No one can get a hold of your dad today. Some police officer ticketed my car for being too far from the curb, knowing full well whose car it was. I have my own problems at work, and I was already called by the junior high about someone drawing graffiti on your sister's locker!"

            "My locker got graffitied, too," Lily said.

            That actually caused her mom to pause. She went over to the woman at the front desk and asked, "Excuse me, did someone graffiti Lily Thompson's locker today?"

            The woman flipped through a pile of forms, "Yes. Discovered before school, but they'll get it repainted by tomorrow."

            "What's going on here?" She said it to the air between Lily and the office woman. Then she marched over to Mr. Harlick's door.

            While she was inside, Lily sat against the wall in the chair where she'd been waiting, and was impressed at how soundproof the Vice Principal's office was.

            Her mother came out more composed, but still looking like she could spit fire. In the car, Lily had to tell her whole story, starting with her locker. Then she followed quickly with, "What happened at work?"

            "Typical small town politics. My boss says she's disturbed to hear I was involved in police investigations of theft and mixed up with some kind of cult. When I told her I was merely helping a girl my daughter knew out in the desert and that I had no association with any cult, she smilingly suggested it wouldn't hurt to make an appearance at church or join a women's organization."

            Lily almost laughed. It sounded entirely too much like high school.

           

            At home that afternoon, she asked Rose about her locker.

            "Some stick figure, naked guy smoking a pipe."

            "Kokopelli?"

            "You know about that? How does everyone know but me?" Rose stomped off to her room.

            It made Lily want to know more about the graffiti on her own locker, so she went downstairs and asked her mom if she could bike to Xavier's.

            "Dear, you're suspended. I can't really let you go and play with your friends."

            "I'm not playing, and he's not a friend." She felt a little guilty as she said the last and realized it might not be true anymore. "He's the boy who was about to get beat up, and he also covered the graffiti on my locker so I wouldn't be embarrassed."

            "Couldn't you just call?"

            "To have him draw a picture of the graffiti?"

            Her mother then needed to hear the whole story about the tape and the note again, but in the end, she gave Lily half an hour to check with Xavier.

            As Lily biked across the highway bridge, she thought she saw the end of a black motorcycle behind the house. Could it be Jen's? What would she be doing at Xavier's house?

            Lily pedaled a little faster and left her bike beside Xavier's front porch.

            He answered the door and said, "Gang's all here!" as he led her into the kitchen where Jen sat by an untouched glass of water. Jen had bags under her eyes, and they looked owlish against her pale skin, but she managed a smile as Lily came in.

            Xavier brought another glass of water, and they all sat down.

            "How are you, Jen?"

            "Well enough. I hear you've had some trouble."

            "Yeah. Xavier, what was on my locker?"

            "Kokopelli."

            "Why?"

            Xavier shrugged. "Some people think my dad runs some cult of Kokopelli, or at least they use him when they want to make fun of us."

            "I don't get it."

            "That's sort of the point. Outsiders kind of latched onto Kokopelli a while back and made stupid bumper stickers and stuff. So to a lot of people here, anything to do with Kokopelli is stupid."

            Jen stiffened at that.

            "Not anyone who studies archeology or folklore," he amended. "Just people reacting to the commercialization."

            "And Dora's family? Did they make the pins?"

            "The local Post-reform Conservative congregation has used that symbol to target us in the past."

            Lily shook her head at the way Xavier talked away from school, the way he'd helped her yesterday and today. Yet he maintained his sort of bad boy image to the community at large. She wondered how many kids like him she'd overlooked at her other schools.

            As if he could read her mind he said, "Sorry you got suspended. You didn't have to pull the alarm, and you certainly didn't have to admit to it."

            She was glad he didn't say flat out how stupid she'd been. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I shouldn't stay long. My mom only let me out for half an hour. Was something going on?"

            Jen shrugged and shook her curls. Lily noticed how Jen's attention had been mostly fixed on Xavier this whole time, which wasn't how it had been when the three of them were together before. Xavier wasn't starting at Jen the way other guys did, but something had definitely changed.

            "Guess I'll be going then."

            "Okay."

            "Bye."

            Lily walked to the door by herself. Something seemed wrong, and she remembered the déjà vu she'd felt when Dave did whatever Jen asked out at the petrified forest. Part of her didn't want to think about it, almost couldn't think about it, but she couldn't deny that Jen manipulated her sometimes, somehow. Xavier had tried to warn her about that or discuss it with her, but they'd never quite spelled it out. Still, he'd know if Jen was trying to use him, wouldn't he?

Lily had let herself out before she remembered about the petrified rocks. Jen probably still needed them. What if she convinced Xavier to steal them? He'd been there for their first encounter with the police. Surely he'd be noticed and get in trouble if anyone saw him out there again.

            Just like at school, she felt she owed Xavier some sort of help, but how could she do it? And what if she was wrong? If this was just some boy/girl thing, or if Jen was only looking for a free meal, it would be stupid to interfere. But Lily couldn't make herself believe either of those.

            She went back up to the porch stairs and knocked. Xavier answered, and she motioned him out onto the porch, shutting the door behind him. She spoke softly, so her words wouldn't carry through the open windows.

            "Xavier, is she asking you to do something for her?"

            He shook his head, looking rather amused at the question.

            "Look, she already tried to get me to go back out to that petrified forest place for more rocks. If she tries to talk you into that, at least call me? You're the one who originally told me it was illegal, after all."

            "You don't have much future as a bad girl, you know?"

            "I'll keep that in mind," Lily tried to sound light, as she headed back to her bike. Xavier closed the door, and it occurred her that maybe she was jealous, just a little.

           

 

 

 

 

 

15

 

Suspension

 

            Lily woke with a start, arms pulled in with fear. She remembered it was Tuesday, and she was suspended. By then she couldn't place if her dreams had been about something freaky with Jen or some new incident at school. In many ways, it didn't matter.

            She got up and dressed to bolster her confidence. She wore her softest, most comfortable jeans and a patterned blue and green shirt from Cirque du Soleil. She tied her hair back with a beaded green hair band, and went down to breakfast.

            "You get kicked out of school, and you look like you're going home," Rose said around a spoonful of Frosted Flakes. She did not sound relieved to be the one not in trouble. Then Lily realized she'd used home to mean Seattle.

            "I'm not kicked out, just suspended."

            "That sounds like you're hanging from the silks."

            Dad walked in. "Eat up. We can drop Rose at school before going on site checks."

            "I'm going on site checks?" Lily asked.

            "Well, I'm not leaving you alone all day. But you may have to wait in the car for some of it."

            Rose finished her cereal with a smug look, as if site checks were some kind of punishment, but Lily was curious to see what her father did out here. She spread peanut butter on a bagel and said, "Let's go."

            The first site check turned out to be an hour's drive to the middle of nowhere. Her dad went in and then came back saying there was a sitting room where she could work. Dad had thoughtfully swung by her school to pick up a stack of homework for the next two days.

            So Lily did homework in the sitting room of what looked like a ranch, though she hadn't seen any animals beyond chickens. There was a wreath of dried wheat tied with ribbon over the mantle. She didn't know if this was a foster home, group home, or what, but any kids that lived here were presumably off at school. The only sounds she heard were the occasional mutters of her father and the sixty year old Dutch woman who seemed to run the place. The sitting room was full of lace doilies and latch hook pillows. Lily almost fell asleep doing her math.

            The next stop looked more like a barn that kept growing rooms on the sides. Lily sat in the car with both front windows down as her dad talked to a balding blond man in a feed company shirt. The man was powerfully built with a deep, carrying voice, and since they mostly talked on the porch, Lily could hear his side of the conversation. The first part seemed pretty routine, all about current foster kids' behavior, school, and friendships. Then her dad must have asked about kids from further back.

            She heard the big man say, "Nope, neither of them ever wrote back. For a few months they'd visit. Nora even sent a postcard from Phoenix once. But by fall, they'd both gone on. Not so unusual really, even when you have a kid for years. Young people don't feel obliged to write, even at Christmas. It's all about them."

            Soon her dad was back in the car, and Lily asked, "Are you checking on the kids from that fire?"

            He glanced over as they bounced along, back to a main road. Then he relented and said, "Yeah. My project is to explain the high percentage of kids who go missing. Other than the initial loss of records, the kids from the fire don't seem that unusual, but when I go looking for them, there's never a known address. Most of them disappeared after they turned eighteen, but that last man's right, lots of kids don't keep in touch. Still, I find it odd that none of them are findable."

            "You think they went wherever Xavier's mother went?"

            "I don't know what to think."

            Then Lily had an insight, "Was Xavier's mother a foster kid?"

            "I couldn't answer that." But Lily knew from the tight way he answered it that she'd guessed right. She would have been much too old to be involved in the fire sixteen years ago. But maybe she disappeared at the same time.

            "She wasn't the one that set the fire and took the orphans away, was she?"

            "No."

            "But was that when she disappeared?"

            "I really can't talk about things like this, Lily."

            He sounded pained. She tried a different tack. "Okay. But you've tried to follow up on all the kids from the fire, and you can't find any of them?"

            "Or anyone who's spoken to them since they were about twenty."

            "Aren't some of them still teenagers?"

            "The youngest should be twenty this year."

            Lily thought about the little girl she'd identified as Jen. But with the first age estimate, she would have been twenty by now. Clearly her father hadn't connected her to Jen. "Are there other disappearances, besides those from the fire?"

            "Sure. That's what started this whole project. In the last ten years, they've had eight reported as missing before they left the system. And I've found others whose names disappear from public records soon after they leave care."

            "Couldn't those just be runaways or something?"

            "Yeah, that's why no one looked into it at first. Without the fire, the numbers aren't that unusual. They do have a peculiar tendency to disappear in late summer or fall, which is part of why I started listening to Evan."

            "Or maybe kids run away from other places after the cold and rain, and here that doesn't matter so much."

            "Maybe."

           

            Back home, Lily went to her room and focused in on her homework. It was surprisingly quick in a quiet house.

            When she headed downstairs, her dad had files all over the dining table again. The papers seemed to have drifted enough that it was no longer clear what went with what, and her dad seemed to be searching for something.

            "Can I help?"

            "Probably not. Confidentiality."

            "Even if they've all disappeared?"

            "Technically, yes."

            "What if you put post it notes over the top part?"

            He looked at her for a long moment, "Why are you so eager?"

            "My homework is done, my dad looks overworked, and the place where I eat may be lost forever."

            He smiled at that, and she handed him a pad of large post it notes. They fully covered the box at the top that held all the identifying information. The form was probably designed to allow for this she realized, since the rest of the information, a chronological record of placements and needs, only included first names of the children.

            Dad told her the first name he was looking for, and she sifted through until she thought she had all the parts for that file. Two pages had ended up in someone else's file, so Lily set to work making sure each file had only papers for one person. There was only one repeated name, David, and the ages were different enough to figure it out from dates in the histories. When all the folders were complete, she sorted them by the date the child entered services.

            She could tell right away that there were clusters. So she piled together all kids who entered the system during a single school year (even if they were too young for school). Over half the files entered the system in one of six years. The batch from the fire was sort of artificial, since those with uncertain records were listed as entering care that night, but it still seemed significant if over thirty-five years, half the kids entered in six clusters and the rest were spread over the other twenty-nine possibilities.

            "Dad, did you notice this?" He looked up and she started pointing at piles, neatening them to look more like a bar graph. "Here's your pile from the fire sixteen years ago. And there's another bunch three years after that. Going backward from the fire, there are clusters at two, six, twelve, and nineteen years."

            "That's by year a child entered care?" Her dad was flipping through the oldest pile now.

            "Yeah, and over half of them are in one of these six years."

            "Could be chance. This first set covers half the state. These kids would never have met each other. Still--"

            "Do they match the Parells' calculations?"

            "He's only observed since the fire, but maybe…" He stood and started looking through papers he'd been carrying that day, and muttering to himself. "I wish I'd seen that at the start. Did you notice which ones were reported missing? Let me get my list of the older kids who dropped off public records…"

            There was a vague look to her father's face as if he cared much more about this than he'd let on. Lily felt like she'd done her first piece of real adult work, and it mattered much more than solving a math problem or finishing a school project. She felt firmly in her body with her mind opened as if from some daydream.

            Without using any last names, Lily and her dad found that all but one runaway and most of the missing adult records had come from the six clusters. They stood together staring at the folders.

Then Lily asked her Dad to read the dates when those who disappeared were last seen or in contact. She sorted the files from all the clusters by year first and didn't see much. Then she sorted by month and three out of four disappeared between July and October. She wondered if the rest had run away at other times but might eventually have made their way to some spot in the desert. She wondered if they'd really been trying to get home.

 

            That afternoon, Xavier called. Lily knew she wouldn't want to have this conversation by phone, but there was no way to change it. She took the phone from her father, "Hello?"

            "Hey, Lily. I thought I should let you know, you were right. She did ask me to get petrified wood, but I just bought it at a rock shop. I thought you might want to be here when she comes for it."

            There was nothing unusual she could hear in his voice, but she knew it would be different face to face. What she believed collided with what she wanted to know: Why was Xavier bothering to tell her? Why now? And why was he inviting her? All she asked was, "When?"

            "Sometime this afternoon. She said she'd come by for them."

            "So you want me to come over and just hang out until she gets there?"

            "Only if you want to."

            Lily did want to, but it felt incredibly awkward. She wished she could see Xavier's face. "Okay, I'll see you in a bit. Should I bring my Dad now?"

            There was a pause, and Lily figured she'd asked the wrong way. "Whatever. Or he can just show up at dinner."

            Even over the phone, that seemed pretty clear. "Okay, bye."

            She hung up and asked her dad if she could go over to Xavier's early and he could just meet them for dinner. He nodded, not seeming to even consider her suspension in his preoccupation. She left fast.

           

            At Xavier's, they ended up on the roof again. There was one section with shade from the chimney, and they'd brought up water as well.

            "I wonder which way she'll come from." Xavier panned around with the binoculars. Lily didn't feel required to reply.

            "Xavier," she started after a moment, "What would you do if you could prove that little kids were appearing from somewhere else and then disappearing as teens, and maybe it only happened in certain places and at certain times?"

            "I guess I'd tell people."

            "Why?"

            "So they could plan for it. Not be so disappointed when someone left. Maybe help those who wanted to go?"

            "It seems like everyone who wants to go works it out."

            "No." Xavier looked right at her, and she remembered about his parents.

            "But maybe all those who could go already manage it."

            "Maybe."

            "If people really knew what was going on, they might try to stop it," Lily said.

            "Are we talking about them locking people in their rooms or fencing off the desert or what?"

            He sounded annoyed as well as curious. His hands were tightened into fists.

            "I don't know. Maybe just developing the land would stop it. What would you want to happen?"

            "None of that." His hands released and he examined one as he continued, "It doesn't seem like it would help to stop people from going if they're really drawn away. There are people my dad's talked to. Sometimes they seem a little drawn, say they want to go. Some of them seem to be like me, with a parent who disappeared that way. But I don't think any of them ever disappeared. It's like they don't know how or can't do it."

            "Are you drawn to it?"

            Xavier had both hands spread in front of him, as if they were the script for this conversation. "I don't think so. I think I'm just curious, or maybe I would be drawn, but I'm rebelling against my father's obsession over all these years."

            His face looked as close as she'd seen him to crying, which admittedly wasn't all that close. But there was something else, like he was finally trying to tell her a truth, without any hints or misdirection. Or maybe he'd been trying the whole time and she hadn't been ready to understand.

            "How can I help?"

            He looked at her and his face betrayed fear that wasn't in his voice at all. He spoke, flat and quiet, "Don't let me go-- If something changes tonight, and I try to go away, just don't let me."

            "But you said those who were meant to go went and those who weren't, didn't."

            "Sometimes almost going changes the ones who try and don't make it, and I know that if I tried I wouldn't make it."

            "What do you mean by 'changes?'"

            She had an image in her mind of being beckoned through a wall, of Jen's hand breaking through. Maybe it showed, because Xavier switched to his normal, ambiguous tone.

            "Oh, different ways. Some mourn, some find religion, some go nuts. I think I'm already as crazy as I can handle right now."

            But it was a little too glib, as if he was hoping for her to say "You're not crazy" and get distracted onto a pointless tangent. Lily couldn't stop herself from asking, "Which did your father do?"

            "All three, of course."

 

            About half an hour later, Xavier spotted Jen approaching from the west on her motorcycle. She was a black silhouette trailing a plume of dust, but neither of them doubted it was her.

Lily followed Xavier down from the roof, and they met Jen where she parked in back. Xavier had picked up a bag on the way that said, "Native Rock Shop." Even as they said their hellos, Jen was staring at the bag.

            Her focus was all on Xavier as she said, "You did get what I asked for?"

            "Yeah, right here." He pulled out two rocks the size of large fists.

            Jen took them and shook her head. "Won't do. You weren't supposed to get them from a shop."

            Lily was annoyed, "Why? They have to be stolen or something?"

            Jen turned to her, chin down so her eyes looked enormous, "I don't know why. I just know these won't work. If no one will help me, I'll get them myself."

            Xavier spoke, "They've been patrolling out there a lot. They'd catch you."

            "Or us," Lily added, and Xavier looked at her, but Jen was still looking at him. Jen reached out a hand to touch the petrified wood. It happened to align so it touched Xavier's hand, too. Then Xavier glanced back toward Jen and his eyes widened a bit. Lily imagined him as a fish just caught on a line.

            "Wait! Where does the rock shop get these?" Lily asked.

            Xavier shrugged, not even looking her way. "The owner's this Navajo guy with a permit to collect and sell stuff from the reservation. He probably gets it the same place we did."

            "So if he'd go out there with us, we could buy stuff right off the land."

            "What, now? He'd have to close his shop, take all that time," but Xavier smiled, still gazing at Jen. "Yeah, he'd probably do it, for a fair price. He's a friend of my dad's."

            Now Lily was looking at Jen as well. Jen raised one eyebrow as if they were making this more complicated than it needed to be, but she didn't object, just dropped her hand.

            Xavier called, and sure enough, he set up for his dad's friend to swing by and take them out to the petrified forest.

            "How much did you promise him?" Lily asked.

            "Mucking the stables."

            "What?"

            "He's the same guy who runs the horse stables, where we borrowed the horses for that ceremony you came to? I'll be shoveling-- all sorts of muck-- for a day in exchange for this adventure, and that's just for the privilege of trading in the rocks I already bought."

            Lily was impressed, but Jen didn't even say, "Thank you," only, "I'll come back after dark to get them."

            "Don't you want to pick them out this time?" Xavier asked.

            "No, I'm sure anything you choose off the ground will be fine. And you said they were watching, didn't you?" With that she walked out the back to her bike.

            Xavier shook his head. "Guess we should bring some water and hats. I'll let my dad know where we're going."

            "I should call mine as well."

            So they each told their parents, filled water bottles, and were ready when his dad's friend came by in a beat up blue truck. Xavier had his bag with two rocks and a receipt. When they got to the petrified forest, the rock shop guy, a small Navajo man in his twenties who seemed to find the whole errand amusing, took a big bucket from the back of the truck. Xavier left his two purchased rocks where he'd been sitting and took the bag with his receipt out onto the hard packed sand.

            Lily was a little worried, remembering how fast the sun set around here and how quickly it could get cold. But the sun wasn't that low, and Xavier seemed to know where he was going as he loped along the tops of pits. It was only when they'd gone down into a pit that Xavier started picking up rocks. Lily watched him find one fairly quickly and drop it in the bag, but he replaced the one in his right hand over and over as he found pieces he liked better.

            Lily wasn't inclined to break the silence of the place, and she didn't know what Xavier was looking for as far as rocks. So she kept her eyes open for scorpions, especially for what could be bark scorpions, but she never saw any.

            When the rock collector came to the top of their pit, Xavier started to make his way up. So much sand slipped down behind him that Lily chose her own route a few feet over. The going was much harder than when she'd come with Jen, and Lily couldn't help wondering if she'd missed a trick there or if it was all chance. The collector's bucket was full and sitting on the ground by the time they reached him. Xavier held out the two rocks he'd chosen.

            "You like those better?" the man asked

            "Yeah, thanks for bringing us out."

            "Hey," he raised his heavy bucket a bit, "You show up at the stables."

            "Sure thing."

            They headed back to the truck. On the dirt road leading out, a cop passed driving slowly, but the rock man just waved, and there weren't any problems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16

 

Night

 

            Dinner at Xavier's turned out to be fried chicken, corn on the cob, and potato bread. Lily's mom wouldn't have served such casual food to guests, but Mom only invited guests when she had to, for work or other obligations. Anyway, Mom was home with Rose, and Lily rather liked eating with her hands. The dinner conversations seemed to be about anything but what was going on that night. And it wasn't until they'd finished and cleared the dishes that Jen showed up at the back door.

            Jen wanted to stay in the backyard while Xavier grabbed the rocks, so Lily waited with her. "I don't have anything to give you," Jen said.

            "Why should you?" Lily asked, but Jen just stood staring out at the dark desert. It was very quiet and cooling fast.

            Then Xavier came out with the rocks. He'd taken them out of the bag, and now he held them forward for Jen's inspection.

            "They'll do," she said.

            The old, metal frame backpack she'd used before when gathering rocks was leaning up against her bike. The way she lifted it one handed and reached deep inside to deposit the rocks showed it was fairly empty now. Lily wondered what had happened to the dark, round rocks they'd collected in the wash.

            "I'd give you my bike in place of yours," Jen said. She was standing beside Xavier, and as she said it she took his hand. Lily felt a lump rise in her throat, but Jen let go almost instantly, leaving only a folded up piece of pink paper.

            "What? You don't need to do that." Xavier said, but his hand closed around the paper, as if he realized it was already decided.

            Jen went to straddle Xavier's bicycle, and Lily realized it was adjusted to fit her, even though she and Xavier weren't the same height. She also realized that if what she'd been hearing was true, she might never see Jen again.

            "Are you just going to leave?"

            Jen shrugged, staring out into the desert. "I told you."

            "I know," Lily said. But she walked over and hugged Jen, and Jen's hug back didn't seem forced or awkward.

            Nobody said goodbye as Jen biked off into the desert. Xavier's bike had lights both front and back, but Jen didn't use them.

           

            When they were back inside with their dads in the kitchen, Xavier said, "Should we go up on the roof?"

            "That's the plan," his dad smiled, but only for a moment.

            Mr. Parell handed Lily a plate of cookies, her dad two thermoses, and Xavier a stack of blankets. They all tramped up the stairs that accessed the roof as Mr. Parell collected a few odds and ends. When they were settled, she saw he had a notebook, a compass, a map, and some really big binoculars.

            "I think she's over there," Xavier pointed to an area south of the old road and Mr. Parell focused the big binoculars.

            "Yep," he passed them to Xavier and took a cookie from the plate.

            It wasn't until her turn that Lily realized the binoculars could see in the dark.

            "Infrared," Xavier said. "They let you see warm things in the dark."

            Jen's face was indeed a red blob. Of course, Lily wouldn't have been able to recognize it, but how many women would be biking in the desert without lights right now? She gave her dad the binoculars.

            They all sat and munched cookies. Mr. Parell opened the thermoses and poured coffee for the grown-ups and hot chocolate for her and Xavier. Jen was now criss-crossing the same dark patch of desert repeatedly.

When her dad handed off the binoculars, Lily passed him the cookies. He took them without comment, staring out into the dark just the same.

            Xavier pulled out the map his father had brought and pointed, "See, she's right where we predicted." He'd drawn in the lines connecting the places Jen had taken Lily, and sure enough, Jen was now very close to where the lines crossed. Eventually, Jen seemed to find whatever indication she was searching for. She stopped and set her backpack down.

            Xavier had the binoculars, and he said, "It looks like she's putting the petrified wood on top of a pillow or a bag of something soft from her pack."

            Then she got back on her bike with her pack, and Xavier passed the binoculars to Lily.

            Lily watched as Jen biked a short ways, then got off and started filling the pack with something else. It was hard to see what she was piling in from the dark, but Lily could guess by the way she moved her arms and hands that the items were all about the same and had formed a pile about knee high. "I think she left the rocks from the wash in a pile there, and now she'd loading them into her pack."

            Xavier took another look, and then each of the dads got their turns. It was Mr. Parell who said, "She's laying them out in a spiral, with the petrified wood on its platform in the center.

            Lily's dad just said, "Round and round and back where you began." It reminded Lily of when Jen had asked about things her dad quoted, though she was pretty sure this one was from a musical they'd seen together. Still, her dad looked misty eyed, as if the words meant something to him.

            Xavier smiled at her and drew a tiny spiral on his map. Maybe the spirals from the rock drawing didn't represent people after all, just some part of a ceremony.

            "Have you ever watched this before?" Lily asked.

            "No," Xavier said. "We were off by a night four years ago, and if anyone did this other times, we must have missed it too."

            "What about the people you said tried to go?"

            "I don't think they knew how. They wandered around in the desert at night, hoping."

            Mr. Parell half-whispered, "She may not do any better. This could all be irrelevant stuff she's made up."

            "It seems right somehow," Lily's dad replied, also quietly, and Mr. Parell sighed and nodded. Their voices were both awed and reverent.

            Lily looked at Xavier, and he just shook his head a little awkwardly. Was he sorry that he didn't feel anything or annoyed that their fathers did? Lily was glad they could watch from so far away.

            It took Jen quite a while to make her spiral. She placed each rock individually, siting along the others already placed, as if to check their alignment. When she finished, she stood looking down at the whole figure for a while.

            On the roof, they each took a turn with the binoculars. It was hard to see the spiral in the dark, but Jen still glowed like fire, especially at her head.

            Lily's Dad had the binoculars when something finally happened. He said, "She's walking them like stepping stones."

            There was a flatness to his voice that reminded Lily of how Dave had spoken in the petrified forest with Jen, and maybe even of how Xavier was speaking yesterday.

            After he passed the binoculars to Lily, her dad said, "I'll be right back."

            It seemed like an odd moment to leave, but when Lily looked at Jen through the binoculars, whatever she was doing was clearly going to take a while. She balanced on her left foot for as long as she could, currently on the second rock in the spiral. Her right foot was up, like a flamingo's, and then finally she moved it on to the third rock.

            Lily had just handed the binoculars to Xavier when they all heard a motor start below them. It was Jen's motorcycle, and it was Lily's Dad riding it. He turned and headed straight for where Jen was. Almost in the same instant, headlights came on and a car started driving in from the road near the petrified forest.

            "Cops," Mr. Parell said, and he was already heading for the stairs. Xavier and Lily jumped up, leaving the blankets, dessert, and everything abandoned on the roof. Xavier still had the binoculars in hand as he ran straight through the house and into his father's truck. He buckled himself in the middle and helped Lily find the latch for the passenger side seatbelt as the truck started down the highway at speed. Xavier took a few moments to look through the binoculars, but he didn't have to tell his dad which dirt turn off to take.

            Lily was shocked when he handed the binoculars to her and got her pointed in the right direction. From the bouncing truck she couldn't make out the dark spiral of rocks at all. But she watched Jen make one high step and then another and could tell that even slow as those steps were, Jen had made it most of the way to the center while they were scrambling out to the truck.

            She could also see the headlight from the approaching motorcycle. It pulled up, probably just outside the spiral, and Lily could see the radiating body shape of her father climbing off the warm bike.

            Jen didn't hesitate, didn't look over her shoulder. She kept stepping along her path, even as Lily's dad started at the first stone, trying to imitate her movements.

Lily remembered how Xavier had asked her earlier in the day not to let him try it, even though he was sure he wouldn't go anywhere. Could she be sure her dad wouldn't go anywhere with Jen there to guide him? It was overwhelming to think of losing her dad like this, when there'd been no warning, and there was nothing she could do. It seemed like she should be screaming or thrashing about, but instead she felt cold and stiff, like her emotions were too big for her to touch. Maybe this was how her Dad learned to always seem calm in a crisis.

            She said, "My father's trying to follow Jen's stones." In the silence, she knew they'd already guessed, and she tried to give Xavier a turn with the binoculars.

            He said, "You watch."

            In the moment they were off her eyes, she'd seen the headlights, presumably the cops, heading toward them on the same dirt road but from the other direction. She realized that while her father's actions might not stop Jen, the police might do something that would, now that he'd showed them the way. Since the cops hadn't moved until her dad headed out, she could only guess they hadn't seen Jen or known where to look.

            Lily watched again in infrared. Surely Jen was close by now. If only she'd go a little faster, and if only her dad wouldn't.

            The truck began to slow. It stopped without turning off the road, and Lily heard the driver's side door open and felt the seat bounce as Xavier and his dad piled out. When she lowered the binoculars to work her own seatbelt, she realized she could see Jen and her dad well enough from here. The truck's headlights were still on, and glancing that way for a moment cost Lily a little of her night vision, but she could see well enough to follow Xavier and his dad as they ran toward her father and Jen.

            But where was Jen? In that instant she realized she couldn't see Jen anymore. She tried looking through the binoculars, and there was her father, taking a wobbly high step. She could see Xavier and Mr. Parell rushing out, but there was no other warm body in the spiral

            She didn't know if they could stop her father in time. She wanted to leap or swing on circus silks but knew she couldn't reach him that way.

He took another step, closer to the center. Closer to where whatever was going to happen would happen. Xavier had spoken about mourning, mysticism, and madness. Jen had acted as if words had power, but Lily couldn't come up with anything profound. Instead, she called out across the desert, "Don't leave me!"

            It wasn't a quote or any sort of magic words, and for a moment, Lily thought her dad hadn't heard, that he was taking another step. The she saw, her father's form was bending over, crouching down on the ground. Lily lowered the binoculars. Things were much the same but without color. As she hurried out to her dad and heard the police car stopping beside the truck, a burst of heat flared from Lily's skin right through to her bones. It hurt. It frightened Lily. But she didn't have time to stop.

            Xavier and Mr. Parell reached her father before her, but Lily was close enough to hear him say, "I don't know what happened. All the rocks just went away."

            Lily looked down as she ran, and it was true, the rocks were gone. Though the cloth bag Jen had placed under the petrified wood was still there, the petrified wood itself was gone.

            Lily pulled her father up and hugged him. "I didn't know it would happen to you. I would have stopped it."

            "It's okay. I didn't go anywhere." He patted her head, and Lily hoped that was all that mattered. Maybe he hadn't gone far enough for the attempt to itself change him.

            The cops caught up just as Xavier was looking in the cloth bag. "What's going on here?"

            Mr. Parell looked at the officers as if that was the most impossible question he'd ever heard, and the officers just waited.

            Then Lily's dad said, "I'm Justin Thompson with Child Welfare. We thought we'd spotted a missing child out here, but all that's here now is that."

            The cop nodded and looked toward Xavier who was holding the bag. Xavier nodded with a half smile and said, "I think it's Jen's laundry, not clean either by the smell of it."

            The cop looked around and said, "Do any of you know where the child in question has gone?"

            They all shook their heads very sincerely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17

 

Sorting

 

            The next morning, Lily did not bother to get dressed before coming downstairs. She was wearing navy blue pajamas with little gold stars on the butt, and she figure that was as dressed up as she felt like being. On the stairs, she almost turned back at the overwhelming smell of baked bananas, but she didn't.

            Rose had finished her cereal and was slicing a piece of banana bread, clearly straight out of the oven.

            "You're supposed to let it cool. I made it for your lunch." Dad sounded just like he always had, and Lily felt herself relax even before she could see him at the far end of the kitchen. He was dressed and shaved and the same as always.

            "No way. This is probably the best thing that will happen today."

            Dad looked pleased even as Rose tossed the slice of bread between her hands, scattering crumbs all over the counter. Rose had always loved banana bread. Lily had never understood why.

            "Hey, she's not even dressed," Rose protested around her first mouthful.

            "It was a late night," Dad sighed.

            "My school's hateful, too. If you make me go, I'm going to get myself suspended as well."

            "I assure you, I'll make her day miserable while you're gone."             "How?"

            "I'll make her eat banana bread."

            "No way." Rose circled her arms around the hot loaf without quite touching it. "Why don't you make her write an essay?"

            "Okay."

            "My teachers already sent homework. Isn't this a bit much?" Lily asked, mostly to satisfy expectations. Inside, she knew she was doomed.

            "No," Rose said. "I'll be back for my lunch banana bread in a minute," she told Dad, and she ran upstairs to brush her teeth.

            "Am I really supposed to write an essay?" Lily asked.

            "You like to write."

            "How about a story?"

            "Close enough."

            Dad packed more banana bread in foil, with an open seam for venting while it cooled. He tucked it in on top of Rose's lunch and drove her off to school when she came downstairs.

            Lily turned on the fan over the stove to clear the room of banana bread fumes as she made herself toast. Mom came clicking down the stairs in her heels. Her jacket and skirt were immaculate for work just like always, but it was later than she usually left.

            "Morning, Lily." Her mom stopped at the end of the counter, as if waiting for some sort of explanation. But she seemed to understand Lily's "how can I explain" look, and she offered instead, "Dad and I talked things through last night. Are you okay?"

            "Yeah, is he?"

            "I think so." Her mom smiled, like she was genuinely pleased and not like she was trying to cheer up her daughter. "Do you want me to stay until Dad comes back?"

            She was looking at her watch, and Lily knew she was offering to be late to work if her oldest daughter didn't want to be alone. Lily stacked two pieces of toast to make a sandwich and handed them to her mom with a napkin. "Go on, you'll be late."

            Mom kissed her on the forehead, something Lily knew she loved to do when wearing heels that made her tall enough. Then she took a bite of the toast and headed out the door.

 

            When Dad came back they sat together on the living room sofa. He didn't look tired, exactly, just like someone who hadn't slept enough lately. His eyes stared out as if maybe they'd seen a bit much, but then he brought them back to look at Lily, and they were the same Daddy eyes. He'd dressed in a button shirt as if he was going to work, but he didn't move like he was in a hurry. On closer inspection, he seemed relaxed and loose, and Lily realized he hadn't seemed that way since the move.

            "You don't have to go to work today?" Lily asked.

            "I'm working from home. Truth is, there've been some things said in town, no formal complaints yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone wrote a letter to the department or an editorial for the newspaper after last night."

            "Will it be bad?"

            "Not for me. I'm not under the jurisdiction of the local office, but I must admit, I don't exactly know what happened out there last night."

            "You tried to run away to Faerie Land?"

            "Wouldn't that be in California?" Dad chuckled.

            "Okay, Kokopelli Land."

            "I don't know how you figured so much out when I was trying not to bother any of you with it. Did you know what was going to happen out there?"

            "I knew Jen was going, but I didn't know you'd try, too."

            "I didn't mean to."

            "But this was never really about the missing foster kids—"

            "No, it was." Dad sat forward like he wanted her to hear him better. "Or at least I thought it was. You know, my mom disappeared when I was a baby."

            Lily had always known that. She'd figured it was why he worked with children's services, even though he'd still had his dad around and they'd lived with his grandparents. But she'd never really heard about the "disappearance" part. She hadn't thought to wonder until they moved to New Mexico. "Did she disappear here?"

            "Well, she'd supposedly gone back to visit relatives, although my dad hadn't heard about any relatives before that. When they were married, she hadn't invited anyone to the wedding except her maid of honor, and that was a friend of hers from high school."

            "So you think she was like Jen and was drawn back to this desert?"

            "I have no way of proving it, but yes, the idea had crossed my mind."

            "And you would have left us for her?"

            Dad shook his head and reached out to hold her, "No. I have no idea what came over me, after hearing Evan's sad stories and all that. I suddenly wanted to be out there, to see a little more. There was something I'd been feeling, ever since we came here. It burned when Jen stepped onto that spiral."

            "Heat. You really felt it?"

            He nodded.

            "Me too. It tried to push me off a bridge, and it caught my fingers when I touched a picture of Kokopelli." She was amazed by how clear it all seemed now: the people and scorpions drawn to this area, the heat she couldn't explain at certain peculiar places and moments, and the way Jen affected people with her gaze or a touch of her hand. Was it clearer now because Jen was gone? Did the magic come from Jen or from the land? And had Jen involved Lily by chance, because some force linked them that first moment on the bridge? Or was Lily somehow sensitized by her connection to her father and her absent grandmother? Were there even answers to questions like these?

            Her father's thoughts had clearly traveled in a different direction, and he asked, "What would have happened if you hadn't caught up? If you hadn't called out to me?"

            Lily remembered shouting and the rush of heat afterward. Suddenly she was crying, like her fears from last night were just hitting her now. "You mean what if you'd been able to follow her?"

            "No. I'm so sorry," he said, pulling her close. "I never wanted to leave you, or Rose, or your mom. And if I'd believed ahead of time that some people could go, I would have known from Evan that I probably couldn't. I'm just lucky you kept me from whatever might have happened."

            She let him hold her for a while, feeling strangely grown up and yet small at the same time. Finally she pulled away and sat up straight. "I think I should wash my face and get dressed."

            "Just one more thing," he said.

            "What?"

            "I was wondering if you want to stay here now." He sounded too calm, like he really wanted a certain answer but didn't want her to know.

            "What do you mean?"

            "I was thinking I could wrap this project up and try for another assignment." It showed then. His eyebrows sloped down, and he was frowning. He wanted to leave but was worried about making them all move again.

            "Where?" The thought of starting over at a new school a month into the ninth grade did not sound promising. Then again, it couldn't really be worse than her situation here, and she'd never been consulted in plans like this before.

            "I might be able to get us back to Seattle, but it might be someplace new. I don't think Rose likes her school anymore, and your mom's boss has been hinting—"

            "Yes!" Lily was overjoyed for a moment, without consciously thinking it through. Somehow, she knew she could handle a new school, and that it was probably the right choice this time.

            "I'll have to see what I can arrange. I can't promise anything."

            Lily realized she couldn't promise anything either. She wasn't the same person she'd been when they left Seattle. Ninth grade at her old school no longer seemed like a big deal, and the circus crowd she'd hung out with might not fit her anymore. A new school could be as bad as here, but at least she'd start over with a clean slate. Jen was gone, so the only friend she'd lose would be Xavier. She thought about that, about how Xavier had become her friend and might miss her if she left. It was bittersweet.

            Dad stood up and Lily found herself saying, "I'll write my story before I start packing."

 

            The next day at school, she braved the lunch table with Xavier. She checked before sitting down that he had cleaned the mirror, so they'd at least have warning if anyone came at them from that direction.

            Xavier must have understood what she was doing, because he said, "I noticed Mr. Morales is eating lunch in his room, where he can keep an eye on us as well."

            "Why?"

            "Perhaps he thinks you're trouble."

            Lily rolled her eyes, but she also sat down and unpacked her lunch. Tuna salad on rye, no banana bread.

            "How's your dad?" Xavier asked.

            "I think he's better really. He called the whole family together last night for a sort of dinner party and strategy session. We pretty much agreed that this move hasn't turned out so well and we'd like to start over someplace else."

            Xavier nodded. He didn't meet her eyes, just peeked in his sandwich. Whatever goo was inside it looked pretty mashed.

            "Did the police come by your house again?"

            "My dad went in to talk with them yesterday."

            "They impounded the motorcycle. I bet I won't get it back."

            "I'm sorry," she said. "Anything else?"

            "What do you mean?"

            "Well, the police haven't been too friendly to you in the past, and you eat lunch all alone."

            "Present company accepted?" he teased.

            "You'll never move?"

            "Well, my dad won't. And he's never fit in comfortably before, so this is nothing new to him. I, on the other hand, plan to go away to college next year."

            Lily realized she'd never asked, never thought about Xavier's own plans. He caught her eye then, and she knew he'd guessed as much. "Where?"

            "Well, I'm considering Wisconsin-Madison, Stanford, University of Washington, lots of others. So you never know, we might be neighbors again."

            "You'd have to work to be the crazy boy in Seattle. Anyway, I don't think we're going back. I don't know where we'll be."

            He was still looking at her, and he leaned forward just a bit, as if about to share a secret. "You could keep in touch."

            She nodded, and it was a promise both ways.

 

            When Lily left two week later, Xavier gave her a piece of petrified wood. She gave him the story she'd written.

 

            The End

           

 


End file.
